Same reply to @Antinous – in flat discussion systems that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. Provide a bit more context. (I would argue this is a more healthy life strategery to cultivate anyway, since virtually nobody will actually read what you write, and taking an extra 30 seconds to be unambiguously clear is generally a good career move for any person who writes words in any language in any situation, ever.)
It reminds me a bit of Windows font rendering versus Mac font rendering. Once you get used to one system, the other “looks wrong”. (Font geekery: there is a high-DPI clause here that actually does make Apple win, but assume I’m talking about typical non-retina displays.) And it’s not unusual to have whole fonts designed to display in ClearType on Windows that look terrible without it, and I’ve seen plenty of fonts that look awful outside the Mac and even retina displays.
So yeah, you have the luxury of being one-linery and quippy and decontextualized more in threaded systems. And on low resolution displays, ClearType is better, too. It just depends.
edit: let me add that I love your spacing idea. We’ve also toyed with the idea of “THREE DAYS LATER…” to indicate big pauses in the conversation, like a black title card in a movie.
