>I was wondering if informal Japanese ever uses this sort of shorthand Well, "ね" can be used as a shorthand of "そうだね", and actually I use it quite often in daily conversations. However, I don't use it in place of "そうですね" because it would sound somewhat rude. This might be similar to Korean...a quick google search shows "예" as a polite form of "네". In Japanese, "ですね" on the other hand can serve as a shortening of "そうですね", but you got to be cautious about its slight loss of politeness, so to say...for example, I'd avoid saying "ですね" to my boss. >Is this sort of thing done at all in informal Japanese Sorry I can't tell you any general rule...I'm just an ordinary native speaker (: