Katy Waldman, “Hashtags Are the New Scare Quotes” (Slate, May 6, 2014)
A lot of these migrations between the worlds of structure and voice relate to written language’s lack of nonverbal cues, says linguist Ben Zimmer. “Hashtags, or phrases like LOL, do for Twitter what gestures, facial expressions, or tone would do in face-to-face conversation,” he explained, which is “create a meta-commentary on the main message.”
Read the rest here.