Twitter users stretch words such 'duuuuude' to modify their meaning

Twitter users stretch words such as'yes', 'dude' and'hey' to modify their meaning, according to researchers who analysed 100 billion tweets. The US linguist experts say stretched words that convey a different meaning than the original are common feature of social media, but are rare in formal writing. For instance, 'suuuuure' can imply sarcasm, 'duuuuude' can be a sign of incredulity, 'yeeessss' may indicate excitement and'heellllp' may be a sign of desperation. Researchers say they've developed new tools that could be used in future research of stretchable words, such as investigations of mistypings and misspellings. These could also be applied to improve natural language processing for software and search engines and Twitter's spam filters, or even have applications in genetics.