I got what you were getting at early on, dear patê-never-chopped-liver eta. What *I'm trying to get at is we have two new members, both of whom use this convention and some of the word-shortenings typical of txt mssg. Is this a current stylistic thing? I know there's nothing new about it, having messed around with punctuation most of my -- er -- creative life.

Marianna's example was interesting, and may be getting closer to the current phenom. And Uncle Werner's biological analogy makes sense to me, too..................