One source of the online-offline communication gap is, simply, time. Speaking is hand-to-hand combat. Like sword fighting, it requires repartee, quippy thrusts, instinctive parries, and little opportunity to rest your weapon and simply think. Speakers are so attuned to their talking partners that conversations have a kind of universal time signature, a standard cadence of chitchat. Psycholinguists have observed that speakers across many languages and cultures pause for an average of two milliseconds before the “right” to talk is passed between them. Linguists have found this global recognition
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