A Synthesis on the Value of Punctuation and Its Impact on Technology

Communication, including punctuation, evolves as a result of societal and technological progression, and although society is examining its value in everyday usage, social media needs punctuation in order for messages to not lose their clarity and coherence.  
Punctuation is vital when using technology to express thoughts and to create conciseness.  According to Henry Hitchings, "Digital communication and social media have produced new opportunities" (Source A) to do these.  This ranges from memes to Twitter.  In memes, it is important to convey a funny and/or purposeful message in a few words, and a helpful way to assert a message is to apply punctuation.  

Meme

As the above meme demonstrates, different uses of punctuation create different meanings to a sentence.  The commas in the first sentence define a woman without a man, while the semicolon in the second sentence - the semicolon is portrayed as "a particularly intelligent ... friend" (Source E) that can be depended on "for easing ... through a complex thought" (Source E) - defines a man without a woman.  This illustrates the importance of establishing clarity while writing because, without it, the message can be confusing or not necessarily convey the meaning wanted.  In addition, without punctuation, language itself becomes chaotic.  In Twitter, "Tight character limits force users to ... 'Omit needless words'" (Source A).  "tweets must be 140 characters or less" (Source F), so there is "very little room for adjectives" (Source F).  As a result, people change their writing style to become "obscure" (Source F) while tweeting:  they do not use punctuation and diction becomes unspecific.  Eventually, this negatively impacts a person's writing by also making it unclear and not concise.