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What do multiple commas mean, in informal writing?

English Language & Usage Asked on June 22, 2021

I’ve just watched a video about Informal Texting, by ‘Sabrina and Friends’.

It mentioned multiple ways informal writing can be informed and altered by use of punctuation, emoji and similar changes, as shown below:

screen capture of the aforementioned video, listing multiple ways in which the text "I'm fine" can be altered to add tone

So as the image above shows, informal writing tone can be changed by novel use of punctuation.

One change that went unexplained is the use of multiple commas.

youtube is down,, i am free

This isn’t the only time I’ve seen it discussed. But no where actually takes the time to consider what is being conveyed, and dismiss it out of hand. This plus other occasions I’ve seen it attested show this isn’t an idiomatic to one person. Someone suggested it was a dialect choice.


The comma ellipsis looks like it makes the pause longer and softer, perhaps in a self deprecating way, but I haven’t found a proper analysis of this sort of informal writing in my internet research (Reddit, Quora, etc did not provide any serious leads). I’ve not found any books on this with my research either.

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