> I ultimately come to this conclusion. A period is a tiny piece of a message. If something so small makes your message seem in some way negative, then your communication is already on the margin. You should look at other areas of your communication to improve.
You're taking it all the way to an extreme where kids these days must be getting upset over periods in messages and wincing with tender emotions (which was a very popular takeaway when the study hit HN).
But here's an actual quote:
> University researchers examined how including or omitting a period in a one-word text response to an invitation — like “yeah,” “maybe” or “nope” — affected people’s understanding. “We found that if you put a period after those short, one-word responses, the people reading the texts … understand (it) as being more negative, less enthusiastic, than if they had no period,” co-author Celia Klin told Moneyish. “We’ve agreed that putting a period after a one-word response in a text conveys something like abruptness, annoyance, negativity.”
Sounds pretty reasonable to me for SMS/WhatsApp texting, and definitely something I agree with since ending a one-word statement with a period when you otherwise never use periods is clearly a statement no matter how small.
And of course, in typical fashion, word of mouth and the Chinese whispers game have bastardized that into what the above HNer claimed: "As far as punctuation, ending periods actually have negative emotion in text vernacular now for younger audiences and should almost never be used in 1-1 messaging."
Even absent a study providing empirical evidence (the OP might not even have been referring to any sort of study, perhaps his comment was meant to reference his personal experience) the statement could still be true. If you are sending primarily one-sentence messages, as many people do in SMS/iMessage/Slack, the line break effectively serves the function of denoting the end of a single sentence. And if that is the case, what is the purpose of a period other than to add additional, perhaps emotional, meaning to the sentence?
If a one-word response would seem more negative or less enthusiastic with a period, then I posit it was not carrying a positive or enthusiastic message in the first place. If I want someone to interpret a one-word answer as enthusiastic, I'll put a bloody exclamation point on it.
And you get back to the real core of my point (though I could probably have been clearer).
> Sounds pretty reasonable to me for SMS/WhatsApp texting, and definitely something I agree with since ending a one-word statement with a period when you otherwise never use periods is clearly a statement no matter how small.
I punctuate fastidiously. In my un-blinded, anecdotal data, my interlocutors do not interpret my punctuation negatively. Sometimes they say my vocabulary makes it seem like I'm too big for my britches ... and that I use archaic idioms.
Cool bro, you know how to use big words, but you don't seem to know when to use them. That doesn't make you smarter than most, it makes your writing more obtuse.
You're taking it all the way to an extreme where kids these days must be getting upset over periods in messages and wincing with tender emotions (which was a very popular takeaway when the study hit HN).
But here's an actual quote:
> University researchers examined how including or omitting a period in a one-word text response to an invitation — like “yeah,” “maybe” or “nope” — affected people’s understanding. “We found that if you put a period after those short, one-word responses, the people reading the texts … understand (it) as being more negative, less enthusiastic, than if they had no period,” co-author Celia Klin told Moneyish. “We’ve agreed that putting a period after a one-word response in a text conveys something like abruptness, annoyance, negativity.”
Sounds pretty reasonable to me for SMS/WhatsApp texting, and definitely something I agree with since ending a one-word statement with a period when you otherwise never use periods is clearly a statement no matter how small.
And of course, in typical fashion, word of mouth and the Chinese whispers game have bastardized that into what the above HNer claimed: "As far as punctuation, ending periods actually have negative emotion in text vernacular now for younger audiences and should almost never be used in 1-1 messaging."