Rulebook-20.pdf

The current rulebook is Rulebook 2020-2021
Differences from the previous rulebook are detailed in the Changelog

Translated Rulebooks:
Brazilian Portuguese
European Spanish
French
Italian
Latin-American Spanish
Catalan

Current Rulebook

Current rulebook and translations of the International Quidditch Association

Rulebook

There have been some delays in getting the rulebook ready for full release, some within the rules teams control, and some not.  However, the IQA recognizes that games will be played soon under the upcoming rulebook, and getting the new text out for players, coaches, and officials is important for a smooth transition into the new rules.  

As such, the IQA Rules Team is releasing the updated text of the rules for this season.  This text does not include all terminology updates.  As part of this, this text uses the terms “volleyball” and “dodgeball” as placeholder names while new names are being chosen as they are changing along with the sports’ new name.  But, other than new terminology, this text is what will appear in the upcoming rulebook.

We apologize for the delay and hope that this updated text will assist our community members with understanding the rules now in effect until the full release of the rulebook. Please find the text here.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email them to gameplay@iqasport.org.

New Rules 2022 Text Released

Research has shown that the language we use can influence the way we see the world. As 'inclusivity' is one of the core values of the IQA, we try to ensure the language we use is inclusive as well. While inclusive-language strategies are relatively straightforward for languages like English, they get more complicated for some of the other IQA languages. In this article, we briefly explain what makes gender-inclusive language so tricky (yet absolutely necessary) and how we as the IQA try to be at the forefront of language-powered social change. What is presented here are the strategies as they are currently in place in our different language teams. We understand that gender-inclusive language is a very complex topic and that not all solutions are equally satisfactory to everyone. We would love to work more closely with the different NGBs to decide how we tackle these issues going forward, especially considering that language is continuously evolving. 

Different languages express grammatical gender to different degrees. So-called 'genderless languages' like Turkish have no grammatical gender. This means that nouns and pronouns have one form that is used for people of all genders (for example, Turkish has only one third person singular pronoun 'o' and makes no grammatical distinction between 'he' and 'she' like English does). English is a 'natural gender language', making it almost genderless (for example, a 'doctor' can be a person of any gender), although it does express gender in pronouns and some nouns. In order to be inclusive, genderless languages like Turkish usually do not need additional strategies. For English, the IQA uses 'they/them' as pronouns whenever we refer to people of unknown or multiple genders, as this is the gender-neutral pronoun accepted by the majority of (non-binary) language users and it has a historic origin in the language itself. 

However, it becomes much harder to use inclusive language for languages with grammatical gender like Catalan, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. These languages assign grammatical gender to most words. When saying someone is 'the best player on the team', for example, the adjective 'best', the article 'the' and the noun 'player' can all change depending on the player's gender: 

English: She is the best player on the team. / He is the best player on the team. (In Turkish, these two statements can be translated by the same "O takımdaki en iyi oyuncudur")

Catalan: És la millor jugadora de l'equip. / És el millor jugador de l'equip.

French: Elle est la meilleure joueuse de l'équipe. / Il est le meilleur joueur de l'équipe. 

German: Sie ist die beste Spielerin im Team. / Er ist der beste Spieler im Team. 

Italian: È la migliore giocatrice della squadra. / È il miglior giocatore della squadra.

Portuguese: É a melhor jogadora da equipe. / É o melhor jogador da equipe.

Spanish: Es la mejor jugadora del equipo. / Es el mejor jugador del equipo. 

With (binary) gender so explicitly encoded in these languages, it becomes really hard to come up with gender-inclusive ways of writing. Historically, most of these languages have used the masculine forms of words when referring to a general audience or writing about people of unknown genders. In Spanish, for example, you would say 'los jugadores' (the masculine plural of the word 'player') when talking about a group of players, even when only one person in the group is male. While this 'masculine generic' is still used (and often even prescribed by the official guidelines of a language), research has shown that the use of such language can make women and non-binary individuals invisible in our minds, leading to a male bias and thus discrimination of people of other genders. 

"Gender-neutral language is a generic term covering the use of non-sexist language, inclusive language or gender-fair language. The purpose of gender-neutral language is to avoid word choices which may be interpreted as biased, discriminatory or demeaning by implying that one sex or social gender is the norm. Using gender-fair and inclusive language also helps reduce gender stereotyping, promotes social change and contributes to achieving gender equality."

Quote taken from the guidelines on Gender-Neutral Language in the European Parliament

Different strategies have been proposed for replacing the masculine generic, although these strategies are often still motivated by a binary view of gender in language. One such strategy is to make other (pro)nouns explicit in writing, either by writing them in full or by adding the ending for the feminine version of a word: 

English: When a player receives a card, he or she needs to move to the penalty box.

Spanish: Cuando un(a) jugador(a) recibe una tarjeta, debe moverse al área de penalización.

German: Wenn ein Spieler oder eine Spielerin eine Karte erhält, muss er oder sie sich auf die Strafbank bewegen.

While such explicit 'feminization' indeed leads to less discrimination against women, these solutions still exclude non-binary individuals and they can become quite complex for longer sentences or sentences with adjectives. 

Another strategy is to try and avoid structures with explicitly gendered nouns altogether. For example, instead of using the word ‘player’, you could refer to ‘people/those who play’ (‘Spielende’ in German). While this does lead to a more neutral way of describing people, it is not possible for all verbs, and sentences can start to sound quite artificial if this strategy is used throughout. Additionally, it can have a similar effect as the ‘masculine generic’, in that it does not consciously remind the reader that there are people of diverse (including non-binary) genders. Depending on the goal of the text (do we want to explicitly highlight the different genders or do we want to show that all genders are equal by using one neutral term that includes everyone), this can actually be the preferred strategy. 

The final solution is the use of gender-neutral language, where only one (newly coined) form of a word is used. This is the strategy currently recommended by major LGBTQIA+ organisations and supported by recent language and gender research, and is also the strategy the IQA tries to adopt in its translations as much as possible. 

How the IQA uses inclusive language in translation

Currently, our translators actively use gender-inclusive language for French, German, Italian, and Spanish, to different degrees. Gender-neutral language is evolving differently for different languages, and there is not usually one publicly accepted solution. For each language, we therefore allow our translators to determine to what extent they feel comfortable adopting the gender-inclusive writing strategies, given their knowledge of their language and the current attitude towards gender-inclusive language in their NGB. We understand that these solutions are not always perfect, and we’re open to input from the NGBs on how to improve this in the future. At the same time, we try to inform everyone about the importance of gender-inclusive language and we hope to be able to provide more gender-inclusive translations into more languages as these strategies become more commonly accepted. For large documents, such as the rulebook, you can usually find a 'translator statement' at the start, clarifying the specific choices (such as gender-inclusive writing) the translation team made for that text. 

In French, gender-inclusive writing is achieved by introducing an interpunct (also known as interpoint, middle dot, middot or ‘point médian’ in French) in the middle of a word, between the standard masculine version of a word and its feminine ending. While parentheses have sometimes been used in a similar way, those seem to imply that the feminine is a secondary derivative of the masculine, and not really equal. It also excludes non-binary people, whereas the interpunct is believed to indicate that there is more than just the binary feminine and masculine. In addition, the gendered pronouns 'il' (he) and 'elle' (her) have been replaced by the newly-introduced gender-neutral pronoun 'iel'. 

From the English rulebook: If the entering player interacts with play before the call, or before correcting the substitution violation, they must be penalized for an illegal substitution.

Masculine generic French: Si le joueur entrant intéragit avec le jeu avant le signalement du corps arbitral, ou avant d'avoir corrigé la violation de la procédure, il doit être pénalisé pour remplacement illégal.

Feminization/doubling up: Si le joueur ou la joueuse entrant(e) intéragit avec le jeu avant le signalement du corps arbitral, ou avant d'avoir corrigé la violation de la procédure, il ou elle doit être pénalisé(e) pour remplacement illégal.

Gender-inclusive IQA translation: Si le·a joueur·euse entrant·e intéragit avec le jeu avant le signalement du corps arbitral, ou avant d'avoir corrigé la violation de la procédure, iel doit être pénalisé·e pour remplacement illégal.


The strategy for German is somewhat similar to that for French. Here as well, a 'neutral' typographical symbol is used to separate the masculine and feminine version of articles, pronouns, adjectives, and nouns. In this case it is an asterisk, also known as a 'gender star' or 'Gendersternchen' in German. The idea is that the star captures the existence of identities beyond the gender binary. The same strategy is used for the pronouns, where the masculine 'er' (he) and feminine 'sie' (she) are combined into 'sie*er'. While some neopronouns exist in German (such as 'xier' and 'sier'), there currently doesn't seem to be one with a similar status and level of acceptance (in non-binary communities) as the 'iel' for French. For readability purposes, the German translation team uses a variation of this writing form in the rulebook translation. Rather than writing ‘Ein*e auswechselnde*r Spieler*in’, for example, articles and adjectives are maintained in the form of the longest ending, turning this into (the more readable) ‘Eine auswechselnde Spieler*in’. In rare cases where there is a truly a gender neutral noun, the asterisk is used in the adjective instead.

From the English rulebook: A beater may not attempt to deceive an opponent by contacting them using a held bludger.

Masculine generic German: Ein Treiber darf nicht versuchen, einen Gegner zu täuschen, indem er jenen mit einem gehaltenen Klatscher berührt.

Gender-inclusive IQA translation: Eine Treiber*in darf nicht versuchen, eine Gegner*in zu täuschen, indem sie*er jene mit einem gehaltenen Klatscher berührt.

The use of typographical symbols like the middot and asterisk has been explored for gender-inclusive Italian as well, but in 2021, another solution was proposed by two linguists and picked up by a national newsletter: the use of the 'schwa' or 'ə' phonetic symbol as a gender-neutral alternative to binary gendered endings of Italian words. The main suggested benefits are the fact that it can easily be pronounced (for the typographical symbols, users suggest leaving a short pause in a word when pronouncing them) and that the sound and look of the symbol itself are 'neutral' as well. Our translators have therefore adopted this form of inclusive writing for most (short) IQA texts, although the content chapters in the rulebook are still written with alternated masculine and feminine forms. The main argument is that it is not clear at this point how inclusive language forms influence the reading of a text (particularly people with dyslexia might struggle with such forms) and that the readability of the rulebook is key.

From the English proposed rule changes document: Joint possession - When two or more players have a grip on, or otherwise share control of the same ball, leaving neither player with possession. 

Masculine generic Italian: Possesso condiviso - Quando due o più giocatori hanno presa su o condividono in altro modo il controllo della stessa palla, in modo che nessuno dei due ne abbia il pieno possesso.

Gender-inclusive IQA translation: Possesso condiviso - Quando due o più giocatorə hanno presa su o condividono in altro modo il controllo della stessa palla, in modo che nessunə dellə due ne abbia il pieno possesso.

In Spanish, there are currently two dominant gender-inclusive writing strategies: replacing the gender-marked endings of words by either the letter 'x' or the letter 'e'. For readability, the IQA translators opted for this second solution. A player of unspecified or non-binary gender then becomes 'une jugadore' rather than 'un jugador' (male) or 'una jugadora' (female). A similar strategy is used for pronouns: rather than using 'él' (he) or 'ella' (she), the gender-neutral 'elle' is used.

From the English rulebook: Players must not use any equipment or wear anything that is dangerous to themselves or other players.

Masculine generic Spanish: Los jugadores no pueden usar ningún equipamiento ni llevar nada que sea peligroso para ellos mismos o para otros jugadores.

Gender-inclusive IQA translation: Les jugadores no pueden usar ningún equipamiento ni llevar nada que sea peligroso para elles mismes o para otres jugadores.


As hopefully became evident from this article, using gender-inclusive language strategies is not always as straightforward as you might think. While, for some languages, there is a lot of existing research and a relatively high public level of acceptance of such 'artificial' language changes, the introduction of neopronouns and gender-inclusive symbols is quite controversial or even actively resisted in other languages. There is also a tension between offering truly gender-inclusive texts and ensuring that our texts are easily readable to everyone in our community. 

The IQA is aware that these linguistic choices might feel unnatural at first, but new language will only become more natural as we use it more frequently. Our translation teams are closely following the ongoing research and attitude towards gender-inclusive language and we will continue to educate our translators and update our translation strategies accordingly. Given that language is constantly evolving, we greatly appreciate input from our players and NGBs to ensure that we stay up to date in the future. We firmly believe that changing language can change society, and we will always strive for a more inclusive society by using inclusive language whenever we can.

A manual for gender-inclusive language in French

A (German) website about gender in German

A discussion and overview of German neopronouns

A (German) guide to gender-sensitive language from the University of Cologne 

An article on non-binary language in Italian

An article on gender-inclusive Spanish from the ‘gender in language’ project

How the IQA uses inclusive language

The IQA and USQ are really excited to announce the dates for the IQA World Cup 2023! As previously announced, the IQA World Cup 2023 will take place in Richmond, Virginia (USA). We are delighted to be able to share with you now that the event will be taking place on the 15th - 16th, July, 2023. 

Luke Zak, IQA Events Director said: "We are so excited to continue working on the IQA World Cup! After having two amazing Continental Games, I'm certain that we will have a wonderful World Cup! We are also looking forward to working with USQ, who have played an amazing leadership role in the history of quadball."

Mary Kimball, US Quadball Executive Director said: "The US is very excited to finally be able to host the IQA World Cup next summer. We’ve been planning for this event since 2018 and to be able to welcome the international community to Richmond is an honor." 

More updates about the IQA World Cup 2023 will be released in the coming months. 

IQA World Cup Updates

This year, the IQA started a new process to update the rulebook.  As part of this new process, the Rules Team creates and debates proposals for changes to the IQA rulebook.  Their proposals are then released publicly and forwarded to the full Rules Committee made up of the Rules Team, NGB representatives from participating NGBs, and at-large rules committee members.

Last month, the Rules Teams Proposals were shared with the public. The rules committee has since discussed and debated the proposals in three phases.  

Major changes were automatically nominated for further debate.

The second phase consisted of further debating those proposals that were nominated for further debate.  There were 9 such proposals.  The rules committee could pass, block, or send the proposal back for further revision.  If neither passing or blocking received a majority of the vote, revision was declared the winner.

In the third phase, proposals that were sent back for revision were then revised and returned to the rules committee.  The committee then had an instant runoff vote of three options: the revised proposal, the original proposal, or blocking the change entirely.

Below are the results of the proposals featured in the original announcement.  A list of the results for all of the proposals, including the vote totals for the 9 proposals that were nominated for further debate can be found here.

The results of the committee process are being announced here.  The full rulebook text will be released in August.

Plastic shin guards will no longer be subject to the knock test.  This means that the more common hard plastic soccer shin guards will be allowed.

This proposal was revised during the committee process to specify that only plastic shin guards will get an exception to the knock test.  Carbon fiber shin guards, and items made of other materials, such as metal, shall not receive an exception.

Metal cleats are no longer strictly banned.  However, there are a few caveats and restrictions.  The cleats must not be sharp, and they are subject to additional shape restrictions.  These restrictions are in line with those found on cylindrical cleats in World Rugby.  Additionally, if an event occurs at a venue that doesn’t allow metal cleats, metal cleats will be treated as illegal for that event.

Expanded Bench Areas: Passed by Insufficient Objection

Event directors will have the option to extend the bench outside of the player area up to a total width of 7 meters, so long as this expanded bench area is restricted from spectators and others who are not allowed in the player area. Substitutes shall have full unrestricted access to this expanded bench area, providing players with a place outside the player area for their extra equipment, bags, and other items.  It is an optional expansion, which prevents this rule from expanding the area needed for a pitch when space is limited, but event directors are encouraged to expand the bench when the space is available.

Elimination of the Single Resetting Action Exception: Passed

When a single resetting action causes the quaffle to travel backwards across both restrictor lines, this shall count as two resets, and will result in a quaffle turnover.

20 Minute Seeker Floor: Passed by Insufficient Objection

The seeker floor will be extended to 20 minutes.

Extra Breaks During High Heat and Humidity: Passed with Revisions

When the heat index (a combination of the temperature and humidity levels) is predicted to be at or above 32 degrees celsius during any portion of an event, additional breaks will be required at 15 minutes into the game, and every 5 minutes after the seeker floor expires.  A table will be included in the rulebook appendices to show heat and humidity levels that trigger the rule.

This proposal was revised during the committee process to allow for a “feels like” temperature to be used when humidity data is not reasonably available to the event director.

Additionally, in the original announcement, the length of the breaks was incorrectly reported.  When this rule is activated, the break at 15 minutes will be 4 minutes long, and the remaining breaks will be two minutes long.

Contact From Behind After Coming to a Full Stop: Passed with Revisions

If a player comes to a full and complete stop (their feet are set, and all momentum towards their opponent is stopped) they shall have a limited exception from the contact from behind rules.  After setting their feet and stopping their forward momentum, they shall be allowed to lean towards or step towards their opponent to initiate contact from behind, but the contact must be initiated before the contacting player’s back foot is picked up or otherwise moves from where it was previously planted when their forward momentum was last stopped.  

This proposal was revised during the committee process to prevent this contact from behind exception from being used to contact a player who is not in possession of a ball.

Specific Rules on Beats to the Head: Passed by Insufficient Objection

Limitations on head beats are proposed penalizing beats to the head thrown from less than 5 meters away from the targeted player.  Not all such beats are restricted, as the player’s position, whether they have a ball, and whether the ball hits the front or back of the head are taken into account.

Stalled Quaffle Procedure: Passed by Insufficient Objection

If the quaffle is not significantly moving toward either set of hoops, and the quaffle is either possessed by a grounded player who is in contact with an opponent, OR the quaffle is jointly held by multiple players, and one of those players is grounded, the head referee shall start a 10 second count.  If the conditions last for 10 seconds, the quaffle will be declared stalled.  A stalled quaffle is treated as out of bounds at the nearest boundary point, and will be inbounded by the team that was on defense before the quaffle went to the ground.  This will generally occur without play being stopped.  There is a limited exception for giving it to the keeper of the receiving team instead in limited circumstances.

MAJOR CHANGES: The following two changes are considered “major changes.”  These changes were automatically nominated for further debate and were voted on.  Because this is not a “major change year” these must get the support of 75% of non-abstaining rules committee members to pass.  As with the above proposals, the vote totals for these proposals can be seen in the full list of changes.

Two Arm Wrapping and Tackling: Passed with Revisions

Players shall be allowed to use two arms when wrapping an opponent, including during tackles.

This proposal was revised during the committee process to add penalties to two actions. Initiating a push, body block, charge, or wrap after becoming dismounted will result in a yellow card.  A player who dismounts after initiating contact, who then adds force to their contact that knocks their opponent down shall receive a blue card.  Unlike current rules, there shall be no exceptions for players who dismount immediately prior to these actions.  This shall not change the rules around players who are beat just before or during contact.

Additionally, it should be clarified that this proposal shall make it legal to reach around an opponent to steal a ball while wrapping them with the other arm.

This proposal would have changed the gender rule so that each team could only have a maximum of three players of the same gender on the field at the same time when there was no seeker in play.