Jumping on the bandwagon here with my vote for proper English. Those who know me well know that this is one of my biggest pet peeves. I always use full sentences and proper capitalization and punctuation on message boards. When chatting, the atmosphere is definitely more informal, but still, it's only relatively recently - within the last year or so - that I've even started using common internet abbreviations. And I'm still more likely to type, "That's so funny!" rather than "lol". Typos and the occassional misspelling or dropped capitalization doesn't bother me at all. There's no need for correction as long as the meaning is clear. I actually tend to drop capitals sporadically because one of my shift keys sticks and I'm not about to retype every single time it doesn't work. But I think that is far removed from dialogue like, "C-U L8er" and "OIC". Like many others I don't think that there is anything inherently wrong with this, I just think it makes the speaker (or typist, I guess) look immature and uninteligent, which is unfortunate given that this is far from true most of the time. Also, I tend to react differently depending on who does it. When my friend's little sister (who's 16) does it, I roll my eyes good naturedly. Kids these days. <G> When my 45 year old aunt does it, it makes me cringe. The woman worked as a receptionist for years. She types at least 50 wpm, and I'm the only person she's talking to online. There is no reason she's in such a hurry that she needs to type "oic" rather than "oh, I see." And I was NOT pleased when my reporters would IM me like that when I was their editor. I know we are students, but this is a professional paper. Don't ask me about your assignment with a message that makes me wonder if you even speak English. Please.
