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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 2850143" data-attributes="member: 114">"Why can people not use punctuation?"An interesting philosophical question. I would say that the reason that people can 'not' use punctuation is that we live in a world were freedom of choice to punctuate as one wishes is enshrined in our culture. It certainly isn't a crime, and nobody will come to take us away if we decide to not use punctuation.(if you haven't read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" you might want to give it a try - a very funny take on the ills of punctuation problems).You might be thinking of the question "Why don't people use punctuation", which might be a more productive line of enquiry, and there are several reasons why people don't. Amongst many possibilities, the first ones off the top of my head area) people for whom english isn't their first language. b) people typing quickly and making mistakesc) like emails, forum posting is done more like talking than writing, and people often follow the implicit grammar rules of conversation more closely than explicit grammar rules of writing. Electronic communication in this form is more ephemeral (or at least appears to be) and so a more casual style is often used.d) in online forums colour is often used to differentiate different 'voices' in a conversation, and it can handle that more easily than plain quote marks.Cheers</blockquote>