Rhetorically
effective electronic chat posts tend
toward brevity and succinctness, even terseness. In both synchronous chat and asynchronous bulletin board
posts, this is often a result of the size of the writing screen.
The
synchronous medium is designed for rapid interaction rather
than discursiveness. Collaborative meaning-making, rather than the individual development of an
extended linear argument, is fostered by the opportunity for immediate response.
The rapidity of exchange encourages
use of short sentences or fragments, abbreviations and acronyms, omission of
capital letters and punctuation, and
inattention to proofreading.
While asynchronous electronic posting generally allows more writing space and is substantially slower paced than synchronous chat, bulletin board and asynchronous conference messages show many of the same features.