America Online chatrooms have eclipsed Compuserve's CB simulator in popularity, but the experience is the same. These real time conversations still occur on a portion of the Internet which is not particularly user-friendly for newcomers. John Suler, Ph.D. has written on the social psychology of these text communities . His essay provides an excellent analysis of how these communities work. It can be chaotic if there is no moderator there to keep things organized.
Typos abound in chat sessions.
If you make a big mistake, just re-type what you meant to say. Text communication in a chat room or channel often assumes a staccato style. Most of the time people express what they have to say in a brief sentence or two, or in sentence fragments. Different acronyms evolve in different online cultures, but the LOL is ubiquitous. So important is the need to express pleasure and laughter that a graduated series of such expressions have evolved.