"yes, i meant 'ybame' instead of 'maybe.' you're a genius."

i'm the kind of texter that goes the extra mile with punctuation. capitalization not so much, but commas and periods (and even the occasional parenthesis) are important to me because they affect TONE. how will someone know when I mean something as an after-thought and not a primary idea without the DASH??? they could mistake my equal importance on the entire thought without such essential additions. caps I care about mostly when I want to express a frustration or emphasis that the feeble exclamation mark cannot contain.

most of the time, I appreciate and utilize text messages as a valid form of communication but sometimes it causes me to mourn the not-so-long-ago time of real letters with paper and ink. i am brought to such remembrances in moments of using auto-complete when it finds every other possible combination of letters but the word that i want, and i think to myself: if i had a pen in my hand, i would be in control of this.