Hi again Anna,
I concur with your assessment of chat rooms, but I quote the meaning of the word chat from Merriam-Webster’s 10th:
chat \chat\ chat·ted; chat·ting v. [ME chatten, short for chatteren] (15th c) 1 : CHATTER, PRATTLE 2 : to talk in an informal or familiar manner –vt chiefly British : to talk to; especially : to talk lightly, glibly, or flirtatiously with -- often used with up
Informal dialog, whether on-line or verbal, tends toward the trite and banal. The beauty of the AWAD forum is that a thoughtful bit of wordsmithing can be collocated and edited before anyone else sees it. This has the two-fold advantage of preserving my image as an intelligent fellow, and of increasing the literacy level of items I read.
Personally, I’d rather hone my scrivener’s skills composing pithy epigrams, than hacking out mindless mulch amid a background of noisy textual chatter. Chat-rooms are for adolescent one-upmanship and flirtatious inanity, not for serious conversation.
