I am part of a gaming community called Kingdoms of Camelot Battle for the North. The game involves building up a castle and surrounding town along with resource fields that eventually lead to building armies. Players can remain independent or join alliances. There are two synchronous modes of communication: one is called global chat and the other is called alliance chat. Global chat allows a player to communicate on a board that all players on that particular server can view.
While conversing about game strategy in the alliance chat room, a fellow alliance member asked me why I used the dash so often in the chat room. I really didn't have a great answer for him, but I explained that since the chat space only allows 99 characters, it felt like a the complete stop of a period may not be necessary. I went on to explain that commas represent yield signs, periods represent stop signs, but the dash is kind of a signal that I'm changing lanes but still continuing the same line of thinking. I'm not sure that my answer is enough to answer this question
I have taken some screen shots of conversations and have noticed that sometimes I am using the dash in place of what I would usually punctuate with a period. I suppose I might be using the dash because it is less formal than other punctuation marks such as the colon. In some contexts, the dash is used as a break from one idea or as an interruption of a thought, but in the alliance chat, I find, and others have noticed too, that I use a dash quite often. Why do I use the dash so often in this informal alliance chat board? Do I typically overuse the dash in other writing situations? Am I a dash-a-holic?
I have taken many screen shots of moments in alliance chat, and some of these screen shots reveal interesting communication moments with a unique set of conventions. For example, it is not customary to end every sentence with a period when communicating in either global chat or alliance chat. There are also times where a period is used to end a sentence and other times not used. In one screen shot, I am conversing with another member about what our alliance's goals are. In half of the sentences, we use a period to punctuate, but in the other half, we do not use a period at all. Whether used or not, there is a clear distinction that the thought has been completed. It seems that this blending of conventions represents a point where traditional punctuation usage is there, but it seems to be an afterthought. Why is the convention of using a period present at certain times but absent at other times?
I invite you to examine an online space you are a part of and look for something to examine. Maybe you could examine the emergence of a certain mode of punctuating (as I have done here). You might also look at the typical content of posts in online spaces to see patterns of what 'good writing is' as defined by the community.
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