Do me a favour. Read this article all about how periods at the ends of sentences in text messages now mean that you’re angry at the person you’re writing to and see if it makes any sense to you, because I understand about 0 of it.
Honest to god, in a million years I would not have been able to think this up. Where did it come from? It just all feels so arbitrary. They seem to be using the argument that it’s all about people’s inability to detect the intended tone in writing, but if that’s the case, why does it only apply to texts? Using this logic, shouldn’t every email be an angry one? Is everything in the newspaper, no matter what it’s about, written by someone who is unhealthily upset? And what about books? Don’t even get me started on books. So many sentences, so many blood pressure related deaths just waiting to happen.
and what of all the other punctuation marks nobody is using anymore? If periods mean anger, what sort of evil is signified by the poor, forgotten apostrophe? Is my proper use of a comma actually saying “I’m going to come over to your house and blow a load in your eye?” It must be something like that, because surely we’d all be happy to write in complete sentences if periods weren’t meany marks.
I know I’m talking nonsense right now, but these guys started it. Of course periods mean finality, because the sentence is over. Feel free to start a new one, you know, as if you’re a human being with even the faintest grasp of how a conversation works. If you need clarification, ask for it.
And did it ever occur to any of these people that maybe all the shorthand and digital chicken scratch might be part of the problem? When all of your thoughts just sort of run together in a giant jumble of what the hell is that supposed to say, of course tone is going to be hard to pick out. This feels like one of those problems that phones with full keyboards should have solved by now.
It’s not innovation. It’s laziness. It’s partly convenience, but it’s laziness and an excuse for it when you get right down to it. If it were simply a necessary adjustment required to facilitate clearer SMS communication, a whole lot of the internet wouldn’t look anything like it does. End of story. Period.
I read about it the other day and couldn’t believe it. I seldom text and I don’t put a period at the end of sentences because I can’t figure out how to do it on my non-keyboard phone. My messages are usually two or three words anyhow. If it’s more than one sentence, I leave space in between. If I’m mad, I say so.
Saying so, which seems a whole lot easier than making people figure it out based on what could just be bad typing.
Agreed. I don’t use all caps (which also means you’re pissed off) either.
At least that one makes sense. Big letters, big voice, looks like yelling. Got it.
Or maybe they aren’t sure of the rules of capitalization so they write in all CAPS.