One of my uni friends used to use long rows of dots .......... like this .......... in almost everything she wrote .......... She used to call them .......... "Thought Marks". Because they represented where she was .......... thinking .......... what word to say next.
It was impossible to read anything she had written (we had primitive text-only e-mail through the VAX computer) without hearing, in the mind's ear, her gentle Brummie lilt .......... complete with .......... pauses .......... with the thought marks. (At least, that was my experience. But maybe the voices in your head behave differently.)