[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".

[musingsole]

> I suspect your experience is with one crowd

That's a large assumption without knowing a thing about me. Though I exist in a bubble as everyone else. Age with internet chatting is interesting because no matter how old you are, there is actually a finite amount of experience anyone alive today could have with it. There's a large age block that irrespective of the individual age probably have about the same level of experience with chat (i.e. starting on usenet/IRC and staying with it all until now). Oh, I know some fortran. Still wanna guess my age?

I'm going to re-emphasize a point I made earlier that invalidates any age-based arguments: Poetry. The conventions of interpreting far more meaning from punctuation than a reader tends to from long form prose have been around far longer than anyone alive today.

[svachalek]

Suspect is not equal to assume. Maybe another cultural convention. :-)

I've been online since the mid-80s and also only learned about this period thing this year. So, no matter how old this convention is, it seems to have been in a minority until recently.

[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.