The Period, Our Simplest Punctuation Mark, Has Become a Sign of Anger

[Lief 🗽]

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115726/period-our-simplest-punctuation-mark-has-become-sign-anger

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I know we have quite a few people interested in linguistics, and I found this article interesting and pretty accurate to what I've noticed and experience in communicating with people through IM and text.

[Bacon King]

I caught on to this a long time ago and is why I generally don't place a punctuation mark on the end of my sentences when communicating informally; you might have noticed that I almost never use periods when making a one sentence response to something on the forum

[Beet]

I generally agree with the article, but hadn't really noticed the headliner Probably cause I never get angry or have picked up on anger via text To me a period means something a bit more formal It could also indicate sarcasm No period means nonchalant and detached But this sort of article has the potential to be a self fulfillong prophecy too no? I don't want to seem angry lol

[tik 🪀✨]

This was a surprise to me. And then I took a look at my texts and realized I do this subconsciously. My partner and I regularly send each other very long (relatively) paragraphs of text that use proper grammar and everything - but the very last line of text rarely uses a period. And when it does I interpret it as something wrong.

I'm more likely to use different methods when I imply sarcasm or anger. Word choice, all caps, multiple periods or exclamation points. Still, when I speak to people who text "normally" I probably come across as cold or crass. Funny evolution of writing.

[Leftbehind]

This doesn't chime with how I've been reading/writing whatsoever.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I always use the period when texting, though I take a no-compromise approach towards written English.

[ilikeverin]

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...which means that we're not particularly interested in this article, because it's just about orthography

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

     I always use the period when texting, though I take a no-compromise approach towards written English.

U r my rl hero, 4 sho. 

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I always use the period when texting, though I take a no-compromise approach towards written English.

U r my rl hero, 4 sho. 

     I'll admit one exception. I have a keyboard phone with a jammed "o" key. Sometimes it doesn't work when I press it and I don't always feel like fixing it.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

     I always use the period when texting, though I take a no-compromise approach towards written English.

U r my rl hero, 4 sho. 

     I'll admit one exception. I have a keyboard phone with a jammed "o" key. Sometimes it doesn't work when I press it and I don't always feel like fixing it.

I'm with you though, PiT.  It was harder to think of how to talk like people text, than actually write a sentence.

[afleitch]

Don't tell the GOP about the Period, they'll probably start a war on it.

[memphis]

What it all boils down to is that tone is critical to communication and the lack thereof in texting can leave messages ambiguous. We have a solution, the emoticon. A shame so many people don't like them. They're quite useful. We could also use tonal markers a la Vietnamese, which is an actual tonal language that also uses the Roman alphabet, but I think that would be more troublesome.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

What. Is. This.?

[Oakvale]

Okay, fine.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

hahaha this is so funny b/c i'm mad at a friend right now and i'm using periods while texting her and i usually never use periods

[Lief 🗽]

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...which means that we're not particularly interested in this article, because it's just about orthography

wikipedia says orthography is a branch of linguistics so...

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

A shame that actually communicating correctly is now taken negatively in today's world.

[tik 🪀✨]

A shame that actually communicating correctly is now taken negatively in today's world.

It's not incorrect, it's different. Language changes and adapts. This is neither good nor bad, wrong nor right. We who cling to the old understanding and thus may not be communicating effectively given the new mainstream norms are the ones in error - of course, it depends on the context and situation.

[Lief 🗽]

I'd argue that the article's described usage of periods is more "correct" in the context of texting than Cathcon's idea of how periods should be used. Obviously in other contexts that is not the case, but we're not talking about other contexts here.

[Hatman 🍁]

hahaha this is so funny b/c i'm mad at a friend right now and i'm using periods while texting her and i usually never use periods

[RI]

I almost always use proper punctuation in texts, and I judge people who don't.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

I caught on to this a long time ago and is why I generally don't place a punctuation mark on the end of my sentences when communicating informally; you might have noticed that I almost never use periods when making a one sentence response to something on the forum

Did you intentionally use a semicolon so that your post would be a single sentence?

[badgate]

Long live the interrobang

[minionofmidas]

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...which means that we're not particularly interested in this article, because it's just about orthography

wikipedia says orthography is a branch of linguistics so...

that's really not true at all, I guess experts on historical orthography must be lumped in with some larger field though, and linguistics obviously makes more sense than literature or whatev

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The New Republic writes contemporary cultural pieces like this?