Language and the Internet

124 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET

names), or both, as in these examples:

log onto the address below and you will see a mock up of our site

the above is an advert I noticed for New Deal

anexcerptfromatommycooperforwardigot

The usual range of punctuation expressiveness may be seriously
extended:

Yes!!!!!!!!

WHAT?????

You’ve got a∧&∗! cheek

Smileys (p. 36) are available for use, though they are by no means as
frequent as the explanatory literature suggests. Common enough
in the exchanges between teenagers, they are almost totally absent
in my own incoming mail (apart from two instances from one of
my children). Angell and Heslop comment: smileys ‘are the equiv-
alent of e-mail slang and should not be used in formal business
e-mail messages’.^28 But they do not seem to be much used in non-
business circles either. Ingenious keyboard typography may also
be used to make material stand out, using asterisks, hyphens, bul-
lets, pipes, and other symbols to create panels, boxes, and borders.
Colour is also present, being routinely used to highlight hypertext
links (www or @ addresses). The range of typographical options
is bound to grow, as technology progresses. MIME (multipurpose
internet mail extension) already exists as a standard for sending
audio, graphics, and video files as e-mails. But at present, there are
few graphic or graphological features that are universally present.
Stylistic conformity there may be among particular groups of
e-mail users (e.g. undergraduates, teenagers), but in the variety as
a whole the potential for significant group differentiation exists.^29

(^28) Angell and Heslop (1994: 111).
(^29) The point about a growth in conformity has been addressed by McCormick and
McCormick (1992); see also Wallace (1999: 62–4). Danielson (1996) draws a contrast
between the homogeneous look of incoming e-mail and the much greater sortability of
incoming snail mail (on the basis of envelope type, colour, size, address typography, and
so on). Stylistically, there is no reason why such variability should not appear in e-mailing
too. The potential is there.