A typical married conversation:
“How was your day?”
“pretty crap BUT I SAW 3 DOGS”
“OMG WHAT KIND OF DOGS”

— TechnicallyRon (@TechnicallyRon) March 22, 2016

You see how that’s funny? I found it very funny. It’s mainly funny because of the flat delivery. How did that happen?

Creative use of punctuation – in this case a LACK of punctuation. You see, what traditionalists would view as wrong is actually playing a big role in making this tweet funny.

I adore this flat quality. It’s what makes ‘Shut your whore mouth Helen’ funny. It’s what makes ‘Oh my god Bartholomew do not hang that in the great hall. Im
serious do not hang that’ funny.

I’m not going to go as far as saying misspellings are part of it, but lowercase letters where there should be uppercase definitely is and even – GASP – lack of apostrophes. The disregard for rules makes the words seem more expressive, less controlled.

I do this with tweets, probably subconsciously most of the time. If something is so unbearable or ridiculous, I won’t end with a full stop. That’s pretty subtle but it’s how I feel best expresses that particular moment.

Social media may have done some bad things to our language but people continue to twist traditions to make it do what it’s intended to do: express as well as possible what we feel. Play on, I say.