[adjkant]

The message beyond the HN title actually has potential. However, the author focuses in some odd places for me.

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. Exclamation points, commas, and question marks, great!

For abbreviations, it's simply know your audience. You should use them when everyone in the room knows them, but you have to think about that first before use. The step of thinking about it is a great mental step to add, but the article presents it more as a steadfast rule. Also, expanding them in parentheses can be a chance to educate your audience for the future even when you have people who don't know, like I'll do below :P

To me, the smallest point was actually the most interesting and valuable, and it was skated over entirely - communicating emotion and sentiment, particularly through emoji use. With WFH (Work From Home) especially, communicating emotion is very socially helpful. I've found a lot of engineers think "well I don't care/need so I'll skip the flowery additions for efficiency" and then leave many non-tech people and some engineering coworkers to decipher if this random slack ask is mad, passive aggressive, inquisitive, or a check-in. This has far worse effects longterm often than an unknown acronym.

Adding emojis can solve this, or if you don't like those, literally giving more social context in words can also do the trick. When we're talking in person, we always communicate emotion, even when it's not the primary purpose. I think many would do well to include that in their online messaging as well :)

[Bedon292]

I guess that is how I know I am getting old? I have never even heard of anyone thinking a sentence ending in a period is anything but normal. And I actually detest the use of exclamation points. They are almost always unnecessary. And I probably read too much into them, as opposed to others doing the same on periods.

It is interesting though. Looking back at chat history. If I am not writing multiple sentences, and even sometimes when I am, I tend to leave off the last period.

I think emoji reactions to messages, especially in off topic channels, are totally reasonable. And certain ones (+1, -1, 100, etc.) are OK for technical discussions. But don't feel people should be adding faces into the actual content of on topic work messages. But, the actual context in those conversations should be clear, and make them unnecessary.

One thing that actually drives me nuts is when people will keep their messages short. Write 5-10 words of a thought out, hit enter, and keep on going. You end up getting 7 notifications in quick succession, and none of it is complete. Please, just write out your entire though out as one singular cohesive message.

[tashoecraft]

When you're writing small, short sentences, there is something off putting about periods. It's just part of the how text based communication has become.

Emojis are good because words can be interpreted with a tone that was unintended, and can lead to all sorts of communication problems. It's small and simple, but an appropriate emoji helps convey our emotions in a way that is more difficult to in short, text based messages.

I agree about rapid short messages, I hate receiving 8 notifications about 1 short paragraph of text.

[Bedon292]

I always attempt to write, even on Slack or other chat programs, in such a way that no unintended tone comes across. To me it feels like I have failed in communicating if an emoji is necessary to convey a message. I honestly cannot think of anywhere I could use them to make a message clearer. But, I will be asking a few folks if there is an issue with my communication, and if I can be more clear in any way. Including the use of emoji.

To me, it also feels less professional, but this thread has opened my eyes to this bias I have. So I am going to attempt to make less of a judgement on this moving forward.

[tashoecraft]

I think with just the shear amount of messaging that is occurring in todays age combined with the lines being blurred between work and home makes communication rapidly evolve. What one things is clear communication with no ambiguity, another might disagree.

An example is responding back to a message with "Ok.". I see many over, say, 50 do this much more often, but to many under, say 30, this is taken as very passive aggressive.

[bavila]

> An example is responding back to a message with "Ok.". I see many over, say, 50 do this much more often, but to many under, say 30, this is taken as very passive aggressive.

I can see how some might take a single "Ok." that way, but it probably really does depend a lot on context and the nature of the relationship. I tend to acknowledge most people's comments in a very mater-of-fact manner, but I feel adding a simple "thank you" (as in "Ok, thank you.") helps to dispel the raw bluntness of a plain "Ok."

"Please", "sorry", and "thank you"--these magic words can work wonders.

[neodymiumphish]

To be fair, I'm over 30 and I'd wonder whether "Ok." was passive aggressive in-person or online.

[Aeolun]

It’s a tone of voice thing I think.

[elwell]

> An example is responding back to a message with "Ok.". I see many over, say, 50 do this much more often, but to many under, say 30, this is taken as very passive aggressive.

Definitely have experienced this.

> shear

sheer

> What one things is clear communication with no ambiguity, another might disagree.

thinks

> todays

today's

> age combined with the lines being blurred between work and home makes

age, combined with the lines being blurred between work and home, makes

> I think with just the... ...makes communication rapidly evolve

I think just the... ...makes communication rapidly evolve

> over, say, 50 do / under, say 30, this

over, say, 50 do / under, say, 30 this

> passive aggressive

passive-aggressive

[robocat]

Correcting someone’s English is usually seen as a sign of social posturing, because higher education is often related to someone’s self-perception of social status ranking. It takes a extremely skilled approach to do it without causing offence.

It is especially poor form on HN, because you cannot know whether English is their second language, or whether there are other reasons for mistakes (such as being in a hurry, having dyslexia, or having a disability.)

[scubbo]

> passive-aggressive

Well, you weren't lying...

[Aeolun]

Sorry, the last few corrections didn’t make any sense even after correction.

[pikelet]

Just remember that beyond words, our expressions, gestures, and tone, are all important parts of effective human communication, and text lacks all of that. Subtlety in meaning or intent can change while still using the same words. Slack isn't formal writing, it's more casual communication between humans, and emojis just make it all a little less ambiguous. I certainly agree that you should try to be as clear as possible, and that overuse of emojis can be tiresome, but there are definitely situations where a simple emoji or two can make all the difference in how your words are perceived.

[conradev]

Comparing Slack to email, in an email I generally provide a feedback sandwich: start with a positive note or warm introduction, transition into a call to action with explanatory details, and again end on a positive note.

In Slack I find that I can use emoji in lieu of some of the positivity, if that makes sense.

If I have any takeaway from this conversation it is that I should use _more_ emoji simply because a lot of emotional context is being lost through the internet. I feel like this is especially important because I manage people and my tone can really matter.

[jay_kyburz]

I agree, I think the only appropriate time for an emoji is to acknowledge somebodies else's message but you don't have anything you want to say. A thumbs up or a celebrate.

[stu2b50]

I disagree, I think there's many times where a statement can clearly seem hostile, or jovial, at the same time, and adding some emojis to lean towards jovial will make it a 100% safe message.

Sure, you can add context in other ways, but it's quick, easy, and effective. Is it unprofessional? Perhaps in an email, but I don't consider every slack message something that should be "professional" in tone. You don't speak professionally to every person IRL (or, at least I hope you don't).

[Twisol]

I have a small group of emoji that I turn to for this kind of color. :sweat_smile: for a note of self-aware awkwardness. :thinking: when I'm posing an idea without standing behind it too hard, or when my thoughts are continuing beyond the message I've just sent. A few others are not uncommon, but more situational.

(I'm using their Slack codes here, since I'm not sure I can just embed them directly in an HN comment...)

I tend to come across in text as very detail-oriented and precise, so some careful emoji usage helps recover some of the consideration that would normally be carried by tone or body language.

[ghaff]

I mostly just use the 3 or 4 "base" emojis. But, particularly in relatively terse emails/messages, I think it's often useful to indicate that you don't intend to be taken literally/totally seriously/etc. I suppose that you can just avoid making flippant remarks and such but that's not the way most people communicate casually in person.

[Jedd]

> When you're writing small, short sentences, there is something off putting about periods.

Well, that may be the case for some people, but I am not convinced it's the general case.

Also, how do you write (delineate, identify, etc) small, short sentences without periods?

I'm assuming people in a hurry - that don't have time for punctuation - do have time for tautological constructs? (small, short) ; )

[finolex1]

In my experience this is pretty much a universal norm for all Americans below 30. Putting a period at the end of a sentence may come across as curt or rude.

Note: Rules are different for multi-sentence messages and single sentence messages. For messages with multiple sentences, its fine to insert periods between all sentences, but skip the last one. The above only applies to short messages with a single sentence.

[Jedd]

I know that historically, newspaper headlines were lengthier, and quite likely to be a grammatically valid sentence.

However, periods were never used to end them, as absent a period it invited the reader to actually engage with the rest of the story. (This story may be apocryphal, but it sounds reasonable.)

Perhaps there's a little of that going on with people's communications where they wish to imply there exists more than they are saying (which may or may not ultimately be delivered to the reader).

For my part - as an over-30 non-American - I'll stick with standard punctuation.

[jlokier]

> Also, how do you write (delineate, identify, etc) small, short sentences without periods?

oh that's easy

you just write one short sentence at a time

like this :-)

[Twisol]

Worth noting that this carries a lot better in a medium like IRC or Slack, where the message framing implies an "end" in its own right. It looks a little strange in an HN comment, because they all come in the same single message.

[Jedd]

Aha - so you're using CR's to denote end of sentences rather than periods, which would be an interesting evolution for the (written) language.

Grouping related thoughts / points as sentences within a single paragraph still feels more right to me than trying to over-succinctify potentially complex concepts into tiny paragraphs.

[bccdee]

Language actually changes like this a lot, and it's really interesting ... Back a good 70 years ago, ellipses were commonly used for this in informal mediums such as postcards ... It leads to a very different-feeling messages ... Heard it on a podcast about how the internet has changed grammar [1]

[1]: https://www.earwolf.com/episode/how-the-internet-is-transfor...

[Aeolun]

Please never do this in Slack though. Unless all of your statements carry a different topic, that should be one message.

[neodymiumphish]

I see it done that way a lot where each small sentence is its own message. Even more annoyingly, they often do it in a main channel on Slack after the message they're responding to, instead of "replying in thread".

[mjayhn]

Purely anecdotal but I think it’s from irc/aim users (a lot of millennials/genx including myself) since long form communication wasn’t really a thing on there. I see some people write paragraphs as messages on discord servers and iirc that wasn’t technically even possible on irc and I feel like it’s even strange to see in the middle of lighter chatter.

Also slack threads are awful, imo. I can appreciate them in certain contexts like asking what tool everyone likes or where to grab dinner, but if your slack has become a place where complicated tech answers wind up in threads it makes searching so frustrating just due to the UX. Also they’re limited, or were, on features (code blocks never looked right, etc). I HATED when outages wound up in a slack thread and not a room which was too frequent at my last employer.

That #tagging/#threading feature available on the other slack/discord/teams competitor I can’t think of right now is something I really want.

I have to pay attention to not treating slack like irc quite a bit.

[Twisol]

> That #tagging/#threading feature available on the other slack/discord/teams competitor I can’t think of right now is something I really want.

Zulip, by any chance?

[fractionalhare]

If the message is long enough to actually have multiple sentences, each individual sentence has a period. The last sentence simply drops the period.

It's not the use of periods on a per-sentence basis, it's just the last period. For certain demographics this evokes a tone of abrupt and unfriendly finality. But it depends on context.

[cuddlybacon]

Tom Scott has a nice intro video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS4X1JfX6_Q

The book he mentions, Because Internet, goes into more detail. But to over-simplify, there were a few major generations of people joining the internet as well as a generation that never fully joined, and each one developed its own conventions for casual writing on their own. Some used the same mechanism to mean different things.

[pmiller2]

Hah! Well, I'm so old, I remember having two spaces after every period. And, I, too, hate waking up to 12 notifications, of which 3-4 are usually pings to my team alias, and then seeing a bunch of DM notifications. It makes me feel like I missed something urgent, when, often, it's just people who hate putting periods after the end of their thoughts. Maddening!

[ghaff]

To be honest, I have almost all mobile device notifications turned off. Though I realize some people are in groups that have more of an expectation of immediate response.

[mvp]

Exactly.. I was wondering the same. What notifications are these people talking about. First thing I do on my phone is to turn off all notifications.

[ghaff]

I don't turn all off. But it's a pretty high bar and those I have notification on for are pretty low volume that I typically do want to respond to or be aware of in a timely manner.

[Arelius]

Fun aside, on most mobile platforms, hitting the space key twice will generally enter a period followed by a space.

[extra88]

iOS keyboard does that regardless of where you type.

[crehn]

My attempt at explaining why periods at the end feel uncomfortably stiff in a Slack-like environment:

Social conversations are fluid and open-ended, with participants organically shifting between listening and speaking. A period however conveys finality, which is off-putting in such a human setting.

For example, “No.” sounds like the very stern “No” of someone who’s not willing to listen or discuss any further.

[bavila]

> One thing that actually drives me nuts is when people will keep their messages short. Write 5-10 words of a thought out, hit enter, and keep on going. You end up getting 7 notifications in quick succession, and none of it is complete. Please, just write out your entire though out as one singular cohesive message.

This sort of typing really drives me up the wall, too. I submitted a feature request to Slack about a year ago asking that implement some sort of throttle on notifications (they acknowledged my request, but took no action on it).

Basically, for example, I would want to set a throttle to be notified every minute of all messages that were received in the past 60 seconds. So if 4 messages were received in that timeframe, I would only be pinged once instead of 4 times.

[jakelazaroff]

I feel that negative emotion from periods on the last sentence (especially for messages that are only one sentence). So if you’re wondering what age range feels that way, you can consider 30 years old your upper bound :)

I disagree about receiving multiple messages in a row. To me, composing longer messages (especially with multiple paragraphs) feels much more formal; it’s like writing an email or a letter rather than having a conversation. I do sometimes write like that, but only on the rare occasion that I need to be particularly formal.

[thomasahle]

> it’s like writing an email or a letter rather than having a conversation.

I don't like having a conversation over text. It feels inefficient, and I have to be on my phone more than I want to.

I prefer the "couple of paragraphs" format of HN, where you think through your message, and maybe edit a bit, before you send.

I'm also 30 ;-)

[Aeolun]

> But don't feel people should be adding faces into the actual content of on topic work messages

Not in the content. But after the content of the whole message to indicate tone? I do that pretty much all the time, as there are generally multiple ways a message can be interpreted.

We can’t do facial expressions on chat, and we don’t have the length of content that comes with email (at least, I’d rather use one emoji than 50 extra words).

[soggybutter]

100% agree about ending periods. I always read those messages as being irritated or overly firm. Potentially worse, though, are people who have a habit of abusing ellipses (...) in weird places. My boss does this in virtually every sentence, sometimes multiple times, and it always comes off like he can't believe you'd say something so stupid

[iamdbtoo]

I find this odd because, to me, attributing malice because of the presence of a period is something you do in your own mind. You don't know the emotional state of the person who sent it, so you think of the worst possible outcome, but both are equally likely in the moment. You're just as free to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[tobr]

You can apply the same reasoning to any of the myriad ways we pick up social, emotional clues from people around us. Facial expressions, body language, brevity, melody, choice of words, clothing, typography, use of emojis, and so on. All of these things are nuanced, vibrant, easily misjudged hints of what another person is feeling, how they see you, or how much they care. You can’t really choose freely how to interpret them, you just do, and sometimes you’re bound to get it wrong.

[powersnail]

> You can't really choose freely how to interpret them

Of course, you can.

That first moment of gut feeling is outside the control of your consciousness, but after that, it's a choice.

You can tell yourself, and persuade yourself, that you don't know the why the other person ended a sentence with a period. Because, the fact is, you don't.

Not to mention that an ending period is quite commonly added by dictation software, so it's not even certain that the other person added it by choice.

Furthermore, the myriad of social cues usually emerge in a whole package. You get to see a whole face, or a whole body, with the words, said with human voice. That's significantly more data than the presence of a period.

[iamdbtoo]

How you intepret those is absolutely a choice. If you do not have enough information to know 100% what the intention of the other person is, then wherever you land is a decision. If it's that the person is angry, that's your choice the same if you believe the person is not angry.

[phist_mcgee]

You sound like you have never worked in the business world before. Half of business is picking up on tone, ambiguous phrasing, and empty promises with smiles. Reading between the lines is a core part of interpreting meaning, and it why many people with autism spectrum disorders really struggle with things like sales, or people management (at least from the customer or employee's side). Nuance is everything here.

If my boss chucks an ellipsis at the end of the message, does that mean he wants me to....

Answer an implied question?

Wait for him to keep writing more information?

That he wants me to justify what he has just said?

It is not a choice as you argue, to interpret meaning behind ambiguous communication, and have effective communication. I cannot ignore implied tone, because I 'don't have 100% certainty of their intention'

[iamdbtoo]

You're talking about a completely different situation. In that situation, you should probably ask your boss for more information instead of assuming what he wants based on puncuation. I'm just saying that given the choice between applying malice to the punctuation, maybe do the opposite.

[MauranKilom]

That is entirely true, and I personally try to be very open-minded about how a particular message could have been meant. But you do have to make some decision regarding the interpretation (preferably the most favorable one) in order to compose an adequate reply.

And that's where things get difficult - at least in non-interactive environments. I've become very wary of the thousands of slight misinterpretations that my email messages might allow, and tend to rewrite most sentences once or twice to make the wording as unmistakable as possible (usually in a cycle of "how could this sentence be interpreted uncharitably?" -> fix it up).

With increasing daily email volumes I've had to tone that practice down (at least for less delicate messages) to get anything done at all. But you never really know how something was perceived unless it went really wrong.

[adjkant]

> If you do not have enough information to know 100% what the intention of the other person is

That's the thing - you almost never do.

> How you interpret those is absolutely a choice

The crux of the problem here is putting that choice on the reader instead of leaving them without one. Communicating emotion in text solves this issue of interpretation.

[musingsole]

It's something people do in their own minds because experience generally proves out most people only use a period in a single statement message if they're emphasizing firmness. Those who do use the period and don't mean firmness are a minority and are generally demonstrating they aren't accustomed to chatting in text (or potentially have always been talking from a position of authority, so no one's mentioned how they're coming off).

[Bedon292]

I have been chatting via text, as a major form of communication, for more than 20 years and at least 2/3s of my life. Before this thread, I have never even contemplated a period having any meaning more than the end of a though. And I certainly had no position of authority, so that didn't affect anything.

I am really curious how this evolved, and how I missed it being something people think. My biases tend to lean towards viewing people who don't use punctuation and capitalization as being less professional. I couldn't care less in something like a random chat in discord. But for Slack, as a work tool, I prefer to stay "professional".

I wonder what other seemingly unspoken biases are out there? Especially in a time where we are spending much more time in text instead of in person.

[musingsole]

It's not a new or unknown convention/perception (as shown by the article posted here discussing the pissed period in 2013). I can't tell you why you would've been unaware of it, and I certainly wouldn't want to offend by guessing! :P

A lot of it has to be context. If I'm talking to someone new, I'm going to try very hard to read very little into the text they've sent me. If it's a message from my partner -- yeah, every aspect of that message can communicate something to me. And in that latter case, a period on a short statement is a warning sign equivalent to passive-aggressive "I'm fine."

Another thought is it literally changes how I read a sentence. Considering "I'm fine." vs "I'm fine" vs "I'm fine...", the first ends abruptly and is cut off. The second ends more gently and naturally. And the last trails off implying...something depending on the person and context. Consider poetry. No punctuation, a comma, a dash, a semi-colon, or a period each imply a type of pause (or lack of pause) at that moment in the words. And in poetry, that can mean everything.

[Bedon292]

I am really curious just how common this is. I know that article existed in 2013, but how many people read it and agreed with it? If you produced a large survey across a broad age range and diverse set of background, how common is this? The fact that I have never come across this before today makes me feel biased towards it being rare. But the very existence of this thread seems to indicate it is relatively common.

I know another person in this thread mentioned a study about short (one word) responses being interpreted differently based on punctuation, or lack thereof. But that doesn't appear to have studied full sentences with or without.

With your example, I am basically blind to the existence of the period. So "I'm fine." vs "I'm fine" are identical in my interpretation. Or at least they were before today. The ellipsis does register as a trailing thought, and I definitely read meaning into that.

To me, a sentence should normally end in a period. However, due to the informality of chat, it is acceptable to leave off in the final sentence of a message. It being there vs not being there has never conveyed a meaning to me. I really would like to know how many things people were meaning, which I missed because of this. Or if people are interpreting my inclusion of standard punctation, with no meaning, as something more.

[BeetleB]

> It's not a new or unknown convention/perception (as shown by the article posted here discussing the pissed period in 2013)

2013 is new.

When you say:

> because experience generally proves out most people only use a period in a single statement message if they're emphasizing firmness

I suspect your experience is with one crowd, and older people's experience is not as much with that crowd. Furthermore, older people simply have a lot more experience by virtue of being older, so that statement is simply not true for them.

Texting and IM is more common amongst the younger crowd, so conventions are going to be more weighted towards their preferences. But the notion of a period being used for emphasis is limited to that crowd. For the majority of the population (and perhaps including those who are non-native English speakers), putting a period at the end is fairly normal, and considered correct.

Language is dynamic, so I don't doubt that in 20 years I'll be "wrong".

[djur]

It's specifically something that came out of SMS, where people have traditionally conserved characters (and typing punctuation could be annoying on earlier phones). Intentionally using unnecessary punctuation in a context where it's not conventional seems like a shift to formality, or coldness. It's like a parent using their child's full name when they usually go by a nickname (or, god forbid, their full first AND middle name).

[mindcrime]

I have been chatting via text, as a major form of communication, for more than 20 years and at least 2/3s of my life. Before this thread, I have never even contemplated a period having any meaning more than the end of a though. And I certainly had no position of authority, so that didn't affect anything.

Same here.

[iamdbtoo]

I don't agree that putting a period in casual textual communication is inherently hostile. I also don't agree that those who do are just simply unaware of the chaos they are causing.

At the end, though, you're still making a judgement about someone with very little information and you have a choice not to do that.

[solidasparagus]

> I don't agree that putting a period in casual textual communication is inherently hostile

In communication, your opinion of how something will be interpreted is far less important than opinions of the people doing the interpretation. You can stand firm in believing that adding the period doesn't make your message more hostile, but that won't change how your readers feel.

[soggybutter]

You're right and I do try not to do that. But as someone who's used text based communication every day for more than half my life, there's definitely some unconscious bias I've developed towards specific behaviors that I don't think is random. I've talked to plenty of folks who feel the same, and there are a lot of memes out there that support it. At the end of the day, it's up to you as the communicator to try and convey what you really mean, and text is notoriously easy to misunderstand.

[iamdbtoo]

I know it's a thing and I have felt it myself in the past.

What I really have trouble with is that we all admit it's most likely a faulty interpretation, but we still expect the other person to manage it for us. If everyone gave each other the benefit of the doubt more, none of this would be necessary.

[saurik]

https://newrepublic.com/article/115726/period-our-simplest-p...

[bccdee]

ATTRIBUTING ANGER TO ME JUST BECAUSE I'M WRITING IN ALL CAPS IS SOMETHING YOU'RE DOING IN YOUR HEAD, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN I SHOULDN'T TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE FACT THAT MY WRITING THIS WAY WILL PROVOKE THAT REACTION FROM OTHERS.

[Aeolun]

Maybe, but if I put a period at the end of a single short message you better believe it’s malicious or I want you to shut up.

[gundmc]

I've noticed a quirk when communicating over IM with many of my Indian colleagues. They use two dots (..) really often and I'm not sure how to interpret it. If I view it as equivalent to a three for ellipsis, it often comes across as rude or passive aggressive which I can't believe to be the intention.

Is anyone else familiar with this and can shed some light?

[oceliker]

I'm not Indian, but I used to do this a lot when I was younger. My thought process was that a single dot would come across as serious or passive-aggressive (there's a discussion about this phenomenon somewhere in this thread) and ellipses would similarly be rude. Two dots somehow seemed like a nice way to come across as more friendly, and/or indicate a tiny pause between sentences.

I used to do this in the times when we were separately charged for every text with our cellular service. I'd try to fit as many sentences as possible to each sent message. With the rise of internet based texting, it became unnecessary to use sentence separators, because I could just separate them by sending multiple messages (and not use any punctuation at the end of each sentence, which is the current accepted "friendly" way of communication).

[sk0g]

Not sure if it helps, but in Hindi, the punctuation, roughly, translates like this:

  |  => ,
  || => .

Could this be the reason?

[vangelis]

What could he mean by that...? You're doing a great job...

[necovek]

I am not sure why would you think that... If a period is to make a statement firmer, ellipsis does it triple...

Like that, right? ;)

[lapetitejort]

...I have a coworker who starts nearly every sentence thus so, as if continuing from the last sentence, even if you haven't talked to him in a few days.

[djur]

Someone I converse with regularly online has a tendency to do this in a way that strongly conveys "your idiocy has left me speechless" in contexts where he seems to (or at least claims to) only intend "your position is surprising".

[WhyCause]

I use the ellipsis at the start of an IM sentence primarily when I've accidentally hit enter mid-thought.

[bccdee]

I actually just posted about the ellipses elsewhere in this thread ... Much in the same way that carriage returns are used to signify new sentences instead of periods in certain internet environments, ellipses used to be common sentence-separators in other mediums during the mid-20th century ... Specifically, if you dig up old postcards from that time, you'll find them littered with ellipses

[molszanski]

I often interpret ellipses at the end of a sentence as an inability to express oneself in a written form.

[Aeolun]

My BA’s often respond to messages with: ok..

And I’m left wondering if they just typed an extra period or whether they’re trailing off...

[soggybutter]

I feel I need to come back and report that my manager just sent this in slack: "I Agree!!..."

[greggyb]

I've come across the period-as-negative idea before. I communicate in text media to audiences ranging from people in their early twenties to several decades my senior. I strive to communicate similarly to all. This includes capitalization and punctuation. I've discussed the negative period with several folks in this range, and none indicate that they view my communication as abrupt, brief, or negative, but that they do sometimes notice that with others.

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.

My default view of messages in what seems quickly to be becoming the common text style (all lower-case with abbreviations and no punctuation, written in fits of stream-of-consciousness) expresses laziness and a sense of self-importance on the part of the author. I find that assuming good intentions of the author is a much better stance to take. Thus, I choose to interpret positively what might otherwise seem negative to me. If someone else is incapable of looking past a period, then my communication must be very poor indeed, and I must make efforts to improve it.

[hombre_fatal]

> 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."

[bleeding]

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?

[greggyb]

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.

[rdw]

Cool.

[pixelpoet]

Bye.

[pertymcpert]

You've utterly missed the point. There are subtleties here that are completely lost on you. Just give up.

[scubbo]

Nice.

[phist_mcgee]

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.

[greggyb]

Yeah! Like I said, too big for my britches. (;

[8ytecoder]

It's usually the shift in tone or language that people notice. If you always call you husband darling and one day call him by name, the man's going to piss his pants wondering what he did wrong. If you write informally and without punctuation and one day shift to a formal message with proper punctuation, the change in tone won't go unnoticed. It signals a change in the relationship, barring any other major shifts.

[Izkata]

I think calling it a negative is overstating it, but it's what people go to because we don't really have a word for it. It's more like, an "I'm-putting-my-foot-down", don't argue with me, extra bit of finality. Kind of like a parent telling something to their kid with an air of authority, or the kid shutting down when the parent isn't accepting what they're saying.

For me, this started in the early 2000s with SMS, and really only applies to chat-style messages, which is why I have no problem using periods here.

[greggyb]

Or it's like you're ending a sentence the way you always do. I think it's like that.

[Izkata]

You have it completely backwards: "the way I always do" is chat-based. Has been for over a decade, even at work, where we barely use email. HN is the exception.

[pertymcpert]

Someone explained to you something you don't know, and you respond like this. Shameful.

[greggyb]

What was explained that I haven't encountered before? My original post in this thread clearly states that I have come across the phenomena before, and that I have explored it with multiple people.

You assume someone doesn't understand something, because they hold an opinion different than yours. And you judge moral character for making a joke online. And elsewhere in this thread, you are attempting to police my behavior and tell me when it is okay for me to speak.[0] Despite this, you clearly feel yourself to have the moral high ground over me.

Regardless of what you might think or believe, I evaluate my prior replies in light of every response, even yours. Will you evaluate your officious tone and domineering attitude?

[0] Specifically, not now, after you have determined I do not understand. How am I to learn if a demonstration of ignorance (or at least that indicates such to you) is a prompt to stop talking?

[kps]

> I've come across the period-as-negative idea before.

I've never come across the period-as-negative idea before. From the discussion here, it sounds like in-group signalling. For me, punctuation is an unconsious part of writing, and it would take special effort (or a browser extension) to remove it so as not to be marked as an outsider.

[adjkant]

> From the discussion here, it sounds like in-group signalling.

I'm so confused why someone would jump to "I don't do it" to "it must be an in-group signal". What group would this even be?

[ghaff]

I mean, even iOS specifically makes it easy to end a sentence with a period by making a double-spacebar make a period.

[ajmurmann]

Your mention of messages ending in a period and this topic in general really makes me recommend Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch. It's a book by a linguist about the evolution of language on the internet.

It does a great job at not only showing how this evolution happened, especially around communicating emotions and things like sarcasm, but also at describing the different cohorts who started using the internet at different times and under different circumstances.

It actually has changed how I write on slack. I'm now for example more deliberate about omitting or including periods, break up what before would have been a long, email-like message into smaller messages.

It also made me aware that ellipses have different meaning for different age groups

[userbinator]

ending periods actually have negative emotion in text vernacular now for younger audiences and should almost never be used in 1-1 messaging

That is extremely problematic, since I've already lost track of how many misparses (and resulting conflict over misunderstanding the meaning) have happened because of someone who wrote what should be multiple .-separated sentences as a single long and unpunctuated stream of text.

A memorable example: There is a huge difference between

    I didn't know that. He did it.

and

    I didn't know that he did it.

[abacadaba]

Correct Form: I didn't know that. He did it

[bccdee]

Once multiple sentences are on the table, it matters a lot less. The real significant line is between "zero periods; none needed" and "one redundant period at the end."

[adjkant]

OP here, I was very much referring to the last period, not periods in general.

[abacadaba]

I'm just glad I'm not the only one who's thought deeply about this :)

[bccdee]

Yeah, the original poster is grossly exaggerating. "Never use periods in instant messaging" is a really strange thing to say. However, it's true that the messages

> sure

and

> sure.

will be interpreted slightly differently from each other.

[u801e]

> 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.

It seems that people read too much into the intent (imagined or real) in a text message rather than just the content.

As an older user, I perceive messages that use text spelling (e.g. u instead of you or prolly instead of probably) as unprofessional, but I don't let that get in the way of the conversation

[vharuck]

>For abbreviations, it's simply know your audience

I've learned to avoid abbreviations and acronyms whenever possible in writing. If it's fast back-and-forth messaging, that could be fine to save time typing. Otherwise, people are very good at seeing long names as single "symbols."

For example, I don't use "CI" for "confidence interval" in reports. I just write both words every time. No confusion, and I doubt there's a difference in reading speed.

Obviously, there are exceptions when space for text is limited (presentation slides, labels in a chart).

[jhayward]

I am astounded that anyone thinks that adding emojis can solve anything related to clarity of communication. We might as well be interpreting Egyptian cartoushes, for the lack of clarity involved.

[bccdee]

Ok, but how do you feel about this?

A laughing emoji would let us know that you think it's funny that people are this inarticulate, although it'd be a touch condescending.

An eye-roll emoji would indicate a frustration with the problem, suggesting that it personally affects you in some way — perhaps your relatives are using too many emojis and it irritates you personally.

A frown emoji, meanwhile, would suggest a more sincere concern for the state of written communication in our culture, and would imply that you think something important is being lost.

Explaining the meaning of those three unicode characters in context took an additional 480 characters. Can you see why people use them? They're very efficient.

[jhayward]

I appreciate the response, and the emphasis on adding emotional context in a shorthand. However:

- There are over 3,000 emojis defined in unicode, which is a very large vocabulary in which to become expert.

- There is no well-defined meaning for any of the emojis, even the "simple" common ones. One must try to infer from shared context what the sender means. This is fraught with error opportunities.

- They mean different things to different subgroups, and act as an "in-group" credential in many cases.

- They are visually very indistinct, and can be difficult to distinguish one from another for people who have less than perfect vision, or color-blindness.

- For people with autism or other non-neurotypical processing they can be completely unintelligible, rendering the communication even less successful than "traditional" language.

In short, emojis are undefined, colloquial, designed for only a small portion of the population, and have constantly shifting interpretations of a vast dictionary of symbols.

I don't know why that's a good idea for improving the clarity of communication.

[bccdee]

> There are over 3,000 emojis defined in unicode, which is a very large vocabulary in which to become expert.

Most of those emoji aren't commonly used. There's a falafel emoji; no one's going around adding a falafel to the end of their messages trying to impart some hidden meaning.

> There is no well-defined meaning for any of the emojis, even the "simple" common ones.

There's also no well-defined meaning to a shrug or an eye-roll, but it's still a useful way of communicating emotion. Semantically, an emoji isn't used like a word. It's used like a gesture or facial expression. In practice, the message is usually quite clear — clearer, in fact, than if an emoji hadn't been used, since in the absence of tone-of-voice and body language text can itself create ambiguity.

> They mean different things to different subgroups, and act as an "in-group" credential in many cases.

Do you have an example of an emoji meaning different things to different groups? In my experience they have a pretty consistent meaning across our culture — even the more abstract ones, like an upside-down smile. The only barrier is "whether or not you're familiar with the typical meaning," and that's the case for any expression or colloquialism. If I say "they're like two peas in a pod" and you have no idea what that means, that doesn't mean it's an in-group signifier. Granted, familiarity with emojis correlates with age, but that's the same with any linguistic shift.

> They are visually very indistinct, and can be difficult to distinguish one from another for people who have less than perfect vision, or color-blindness.

I'm sure there are accessibility options which people can configure on their phones to minimize this. Large-text mode, for instance, or a high-contrast emoji font. Text itself is a medium which isn't very accessible to vision-impaired people, and we have developed solutions for that.

> For people with autism or other non-neurotypical processing they can be completely unintelligible, rendering the communication even less successful than "traditional" language.

Autistic people also have trouble understanding the meaning of facial expressions and of metaphors sometimes, but that doesn't mean that those shouldn't be used in conversation. It just means that everyone should know their audience.

---

I don't think you've raised any serious practical issues — they seem to be all special cases, such as "what if you're talking to an autistic person or a blind person or an older person." Under those circumstances I would communicate differently, same as if I were speaking to a deaf person, or emailing a blind person, or talking to someone with poor English skills. There is no universally-viable way of communicating, but emoji typically reduce ambiguity and add layers of expression to a message, so in most cases they're a good choice.

[rsfern]

Seriously? I wonder how you feel about “/s” and similar?

There are plenty of uses of emoji that don’t add clarity, but I think it’s a bit much to say they can’t be used in a way that adds clarity at all.

[jhayward]

I've expanded on my objections a bit in a sibling comment, but to address "/s": it doesn't have many of the emoji drawbacks.

It is literal shorthand for a well-defined word whose definition can be found. It is visually distinct, and follows the centuries of typographical design we use to acquire written symbols. And it refers to a well-known concept.

So I have no objection to it.

Of course there are some symbols which are easier to visually acquire, and seem to refer to well-defined concepts. But even the various smileys are unintelligible as to their meaning when taken as a group.

So once one gets off the basic "smiling face/thumbs up/thumbs down" subset I'd say it is a disaster for communication in a professional setting, and is exclusionary in a way that its proponents actually want it to be - as an in-group indicator that makes them feel a part of something that "others" are not.

[Zecc]

It's funny because we can't tell whether your comment is sarcastic or not.

I like to think you've done it on purpose.

[lapetitejort]

I regularly use sad emojis when I let my boss know I just screwed something up in production. For celebrations we use giphy.

[Zecc]

Here's hoping your screwups in production become less regular. :)