Excerpts from a transcript of computer "conversations" provide the basis for a study of how people manage ongoing interaction, given the constraints of computer-mediated discourse, and whether any unusual conventions are used in doing so. The discourse was analyzed using address, topical references, and adjacency pairs to link the messages. Several factors complicate interaction by computer: the lag between real-time message production and the eventual display of a message on the screen; the absence of behaviors indicating utterance and turn boundaries, turn relevance places, or address; and the elimination of intonation, stress, gaze and pauses as management devices. Participants adapted by typing out "vocalizations" and punctuation marks such as ellipses, using imaginary physical interaction to replace face-to-face contact, and addressing each other by name more frequently than would be necessary in normal conversation. Despite the apparent disorder generated by the linear display of messages from several simultaneous conversations, participants successfully pursued multiple threads of discourse. Further research is necessary to determine to what degree the features described here are idiosyncratic to management of interaction in this particular message system. (One page of references, one appendix, and two figures are attached.) (MHC)