Informal writing online is a genuine new linguistic register

McCulloch's foundational move is to insist that texting and social-media writing be studied on its own terms, not measured against the standards of formal writing it was never trying to be. Just as spoken English has slang, regional accents, and casual registers distinct from a legal document, informal internet writing has developed its own conventions — abbreviations, deliberate misspellings, punctuation choices — that are consistent, learnable, and rule-governed rather than random decay.

She points out that people fluidly switch registers depending on context: the same person might write a careful, punctuated email to a boss and a lowercase, unpunctuated text to a friend within minutes, without confusion. That fluency itself is evidence of mastery, not carelessness — nobody accidentally forgets how to capitalize; they're choosing the register that fits the relationship and platform.

Takeaway: judge casual digital writing by whether it communicates effectively in context, not by the rules of formal prose it was never meant to follow.