This study analyzes gender variation in nonstandard typography—specifically, abbreviations and insertions—in mobile phone text messages (SMS) posted to a public Italian interactive television (iTV) program. All broadcast SMS were collected for a period of 2 days from the Web archive for the iTV program, and the frequency and distribution of abbreviations and insertions, as well as overall message lengths, were analyzed according to sender gender. The results reveal that females posted more and longer SMS and followed more, and more varied, nonstandard typographic practices, contrary to previous gender-related findings in the sociolinguistics and computer-mediated communication literatures. A theoretically grounded explanation for these findings is developed in terms of the localized norms of a heterosexual market—and an implicit dating market—in Italian iTV SMS.

1. Foreword 2. Introduction 3. I. Linguistic Perspectives 4. Electronic Language: A new variety of English (by Collot, Milena) 5. Oral and written linguistic aspects of computer conferencing (by Yates, Simeon J.) 6. Linguistic and interactional features of Internet Relay Chat (by Werry, Christopher C.) 7. Functional comparisons of face-to-face and computer-mediated decision making interactions (by Condon, Sherri L.) 8. Two variants of an electronic message schema (by Herring, Susan C.) 9. II. Social and Ethical Perspectives 10. Managing the virtual commons: Cooperation and conflict in computer communities (by Kollock, Peter) 11. Our passionate response to virtual reality (by Deuel, Nancy R.) 12. Cyberfeminism (by Hall, Kira) 13. III. Cross-Cultural Perspectives 14. Computer-mediated conversations as a new dimension of intercultural communication between East Asian and North American college students (by Ma, Ringo) 15. Perceptions of American culture: The impact of an electronically-mediated cultural exchange program on Mexican high school students (by Meagher, Mary Elaine) 16. Visible conversation and academic inquiry: CMC in a culturally diverse classroom (by Golomb, Gregory G.) 17. IV. CMC and group Interaction 18. Group dynamics in an e-mail forum (by Korenman, Joan) 19. Writing to work: How using e-mail can reflect technological and organizational change (by Ziv, Oren) 20. The rhetorical dynamics of a community protest in cyberspace: What happened with Lotus Marketplace (by Gurak, Laura J.) 21. References 22. Index of names 23. Index of subjects