It's not fair that being almost 35 I should feel so old, is it? ;-)
In meatspace you can rely on nonverbal cues, online you cannot. So if we can overload the semantics of a period and of capital letters to help compensate for the lack of nonverbal communication, all the better. Full sentences and proper grammar don't go away -- they just take on a different meaning. Clear communication is hard enough as is, why complicate matters further by limiting yourself to perfect sentences and lose out on the extra nuance?
Also, you'll notice that I don't hold fanatically to punctuation rules or rely on punctuation alone: for example, I use emoticons to try to convey my "tone" and if my sentence ends with an emoticon, I don't include the full stop.
As for what I believe to be "correct punctuation", I guess my definition of "correct" stems from an increasingly outdated and somewhat romantic belief that people read books ;)
My rationale is that the multitude of authors use punctuation more or less consistently, which trains readers to have a certain set of expectations. If my punctuation doesn't match their expectations, I'm more likely to provoke a miscommunication.
So it all boils out to assumptions and expectations, which is why I said I feel old: mine are outdated ;)
My problem with that, and I'm sympathetic to both situations, but it seems as though the rules of proper grammar have been replaced with new rules that are less expressive than the old rules.
Sure, if the community infers a period as hostile, then clearly, one attempting to avoid seeming hostile would be wise to avoid using periods. However, why is that the case? How did it get there in the first place?
Yes, I know it's been this way for awhile, but the editor in my soul won't allow me to craft broken sentences, even where I know that they'll be more effective at communicating. Yes, I acknowledge that's a problem of mine, but I would argue that the bigger problem is that people are looking for more expressiveness by arbitrarily assigning connotation to things that otherwise bear none, while completely disregarding that there are ways to be more expressive through regular old English.
2. No.
3. no.
4. No
5. no
Only number 2 is correct grammatically. You can expand the list with other versions of no (nope, no-no) and with other punctuation (exclamation mark, ellipsis). There are easily 20 different versions of "no" I can think of from the top of my head. Clearly being able to pick the "no" that fits best is an expressive advantage. I agree that there are ways to express yourself precisely in correct/formal English, but it's a lot more verbose.
Language is really pliable. It's quite strange that "fuck no" offends only puritans but "uhm... no." can set off fireworks with nearly anybody. I guess we all just have to adapt.
I'd be more offended by the former than the latter, though I wouldn't be all that offended in either case.
> I guess we all just have to adapt.
I agree, if by adapt you mean we can all just chill out a little and be better listeners. I think the graph of grammatical and punctuation expectations is growing a longer tail.
It isn't the case that using a period implies hostility or anything else, it's using a period in a context where it's unexpected. In other words: if you avoid using periods in most messages, then use a period, it conveys just as much information about your tone as ending with an emoticon.
If you always use a period, it's meaningless - but people don't, and therefore it has meaning in those situations.
For IRC or chat, it doesn't make sense to use capitalization or most punctuation. The beginning of the line serves as a delimiter between messages; capitalization is redundant in this capacity. Likewise, the end of the line serves a similar purpose, which makes periods (generally) redundant. The addition of a period in this medium adds extra emphasis to the message, which is often interpreted as aggressiveness (hence this article).
Also, it is unfair to associate lack of capitalization with poor grammar and spelling. Poor grammar is associated with lack of education. Lack of capitalization should not be! You probably were not implying an association, but many others I have spoken to over the years have. (For some reason, I've had a lot of conversations about this stuff...)
That being said, there are plenty of reason to eschew writing best practices, and you have to be pragmatic about it (for your own sanity, if nothing else). Have a hand injury? Skip the shift key once in a while if it saves you some pain. You're trading readability for speed/comfort/whatever, but depending on the situation that might be the better decision.