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uh...i wondered if the point that would be taken was bigger or other than the one i meant as i was scrounging up some more coffee...
on the op question: a messageboard is a curious place in genre-terms.
conventions for usage are genre-specific--so (digress right away...yay) in experimental poetry one set of rules applies, while in historical fiction another set applies.
these boards are probably somewhere between email/im and older print forms, and most of the conventions that folk use follow from that--so the writing is often somewhere between formal written and spoken versions of (in this case) english. it is pretty obvious that spoken and written language are not the same, that the former is much more bendable than the latter. so you could look at the way folk write in these places as translation exercises.
try transcribing exactly how you speak--you know, include your accent, your contractions, your slang, and you'll see just how much a translation exercise it is--if you dont already know.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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