• It probably has to do with strict character limits and the habit spreading. Twitter is only, what, 156 characters? I know text messages used to be something similar, and early on, they cost around 3 cents a letter and you had to hit the numbers multiple times to cycle through to the letter or punctuation that you wanted. It’s where stuff like l33t speak came from, at least.

    • Fair. I grew up with 140 character limits for SMS and having limits on how many texts I could send, so I get it. But instead of cutting out punctuation, I used more direct language and abbreviations. Now that there’s no real limit on texts, I’m a bit more wordy and am extra careful about punctuation, especially since I use swipe texting.