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They contained a combination of standard spelling, apparently accidental mistakes, slang, sentence fragments, \u201ctypographic slang\u201d and interjections. Several new creative spelling variants derived from previous forms of computer\u2010mediated communication have become extremely common, including u, ur, :), haha and lol. The vast majority of comments (97 per cent) contained at least one non\u2010standard language feature, suggesting that members almost universally recognise the informal nature of this kind of messaging.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>Research limitations\/implications<\/jats:title>The investigation only covered MySpace and only analysed English comments.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>Practical implications<\/jats:title>MySpace comments should not be written in, or judged by, standard linguistic norms and may cause special problems for information retrieval.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>Originality\/value<\/jats:title>This is the first large\u2010scale study of language in social network comments.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/14684520910944391","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2009,2,22]],"date-time":"2009-02-22T05:08:38Z","timestamp":1235279318000},"page":"58-76","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":24,"title":["MySpace comments"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"33","author":[{"given":"Mike","family":"Thelwall","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"140","reference":[{"key":"key2022021720481067100_b1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Androutsopoulos, J. 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