Before the advent of the computer, I would hazard a guess that, aside from academicians and literary types and word junkies, few people actually took the pains to sit down and compose a thought on paper - in cursive or at the typewriter - to another person. The fine art of letter writing had virtually died in the wake of Ma Bell. Access to forums such as this one has revived an interest in expressing oneself coherently and succinctly, for (as has been mentioned previously regarding emoticons and acronyms)in the absence of facial expression and body language, the singularity of the written word imposed on the backdrop of a blank screen is all the receiver has available from which to form his/her response, and in similar fashion, all that the sender has at his/her disposal from which to deliver the message. If one wants to be understood, communicating within these narrow parameters focuses the sender's attention on style, syntax, spelling, structure, and a host of other grammatical considerations that normally fall by the wayside in casual conversation. In my opinion, that is a good thing. That is not to say that these considerations should be the most dominant elements when conversing with your neighbor about the weather, but maybe typing out messages with some thought as to their content will carry over into the spoken word and curb the prolific, MTV-spawned inclination to say things like, "and then there was this thing...and ummm....you know what I'm saying?" Maybe not.

My shortcoming (one of many)is that I've never been able to effectively adopt a conversational style in my writing. What results when I try to transcribe casual speech patterns into written communication is a disjointed jumbling of thought fragments. Therefore, through my postings I imagine I come across as a rather formal and stilted character, when in fact I'm a common tee shirt and jeans "let's go have a beer" kinda guy. Intriguing how, in the absence of other informational stimuli, some electrons whizzing across the wires, changing ones to zeroes and zeroes to ones, form the basis for our impressions of others.

Regards, Neil