'LOL' is one of several texting expressions that convey nuance in a system where you don't have the voice and face to do it the way you normally would.

Texting is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk.

Texting is very loose in its structure. No one thinks about capital letters or punctuation when one texts, but then again, do you think about those things when you talk?

Rap and spoken word have reawakened the country to poetry in itself. Texting and Twitter encourage creative uses of casual language, in ways I have celebrated widely. But we've fallen behind on savoring the formal layer of our language.

Every third person in the world is a drama queen. And crying 'victim,' especially when you're not really a victim in any real way, feels good. It feels good to cry victim if you're not one.

Very few have been successful. Nuance is really defining voice interface.