27
votes
The death of punctuation
I've noticed a trend where people, young and old, are just not punctuating their sentences anymore. Is it intentional? Do people not know how to punctuate their sentences? Surely, this is not good.
okay but punctuating how because i know some people who have got so done with autocorrect that they just turned it off and cant be bothered to manually punctuate anymore and ive seen some people here on tildes and other websites and even blog authors who dont bother with much puctuating either like they wont use apostrophes commas or uppercase letters but theyll at least user periods to stop their sentences still which i think is a bit like her telling you to take the condom off but then you pull out before finishing inside her but what do i know
Am I too gay to get the metaphor
Maybe not gay enough. Gotta try harder!
I suppose commas or capitalization aren't a big deal in casual texting situations. But periods are a must if the goal is not to have a stroke.
maybe that's why I got into the habit of sending many short messages making up a broader "transaction" from my end because I think periods = multiple sentences in a message, and that comes across as too serious
so for the most part my messages in texting situations are written like this, where I don't want to add a period and the period is effectively the end of a particular text
sorry to my friends who will never read this but if you are the type to have phone notifications on for discord DMs, please let me know if this is bothering you because I really can try to do this less depending on who im messaging
I'm kind of the opposite. I will write massive walls of text and send one singular message no matter the number of topics contained in it. Even if you send me N messages spanning N distinct topics, you will get a single message containing ≥N paragraphs of text.
I'm too self-conscious about sending multiple notifications to people, I'm too worried about people getting an incorrect/incomplete meaning from my messages before I'm done, I don't want to keep N parallel pseudo-threads for every distinct topic, and I just am naturally verbose so I always end up producing gigantic word vomits anyway.
I'm happy to tailor this if someone has a legit reason, but that's what mostly comes naturally
Edit: That said, it's pretty common for me to not add a period to the last sentence of a message/post, or even the last sentence of a paragraph, depending on the mood
I'm the same as you and my coworkers all hate me for it. I wish more people communicated this way because to me it's a lot easier and more logical.
I've gotten into the habit of numbering the different parts of my multipurpose messages.
And quite a few people have gotten the hang of answering with numbers too (to the parts that they want and just ignoring the rest, as you do!)
Works wonders in my experience!
I do the exact same thing, to some people. Most people Ive learned to hold a lot back cause they’ll just stop responding if I send too many words at once
I'll sometimes include a TL;DR or BLUF at the top for this reason. Then the details and context are still there if they want to read them.
I’m friends with a lot of anxious humans, rather than accepting the TLDR they’ll feel obligated to read the entire text and they wont respond until they do.
I love them and I shorten my texts for their sake, lol
I like to think of it as a form of batching. (Weirdly, I can't help but envision the extra bytes of overhead and metadata sitting in a database somewhere when I send things in multiple messages.) I'm also a fan of the "no hello" and "don't be spooky" policies. I also work on an international team, so a lot of communication tends to be asynchronous anyway.
The one downside I see is that if the other party already knows most of the context, then they may be able to confirm this right away and save you from writing out a lot of extra context for their benefit. But then again, I find that redundancy can also help to stave off misunderstandings and make sure you're truly on the same page.
I do that a lot, too, in DMs.
Like
since commas and fullstops are naturally pauses in speech
I tend to just break them out in different consecutive messages
I sometimes wonder if people find that annoying or not.
Capitalization I may start to give less of a fuck about as that involves friction between how I use a keyboard and how Linux wants me to use a keyboard.
This is like counting drops in the ocean from the ISS.
Thanks, I hate it.
On sites like this? On reddit? On email? I absolutely will use punctuation and capitalization. I'll even re-read my comments/posts hours later and edit them if I see mistakes. For email, it sometime takes me an hour to draft a message, because I'm trying to make sure everything sounds and looks good.
But on text messages, Signal/WhatsApp, Discord, even Teams messages at work between me and a coworker or a few coworkers I'm cool with? Nah. No point. Really, it's signaling closeness and level of comfort. Like, "Hey, you and I are cool; we're friends or at least friendly, right? Let's not be so formal with each other; there's no need."
Idk. Some languages have that T-V distinction. Where people you're familiar with are addressed with the T word, while others you don't know as well are addressed by the more formal V word. I think French even has terms for that: "Vouvoyer" and "Tutoyer." To me, lack of capitalization and punctuation in certain contexts and mediums is basically the same thing as "Tutoyer."
And there's definitely meaning behind punctuation on texts. Like a period at the very end of a text can mean terseness or seriousness. Now if my Boomer Dad does it -- and he does -- I don't think anything of it. Because he doesn't know about that stuff, nor does he care. But with someone my age (Millennial) or younger? And/or who I know normally doesn't leave periods at the end of a message? Hmm...Are they mad at me? And I do the same. It's a signal. Of course, I only use that signal with people who know it. And I can tell from their texts whether they do or not.
I used to do that as well. But in a work related context, that is just not time worth spending. I got cured of that over time when I started mailing with managers and receiving mails from people high up the totem pole. Where I noticed that the higher up people are in an organization, the less punctuated their mails are to the point of being sloppy. Combined with the fact that many people just poorly read mail no matter how much time I spend on writing them, I just stopped worrying about it so much.
Mind you, I'll still do a read over and make sure it is presentable. But I am just not that bothered by "the tone" being perfect. Frankly, I think I spend more time on Tildes comments than I do on work related mails now that I think about it.
I did read once about how people lower on the totem pole, when talking to people higher up, will be more verbose and follow proper punctuation and all that, while those higher up, responding, tend not to be.
I think the particular context was students and professors in college, where a student making a request of their professor via email would write like two paragraphs, all proper, only for the prof to answer back merely "yes" or "no" with no punctuation/capitalization or anything. It had something to do with time management. That professors had a lot of emails to get through, and didn't have time to "properly" respond to everyone. Plus being "higher up," the student isn't going to chide the professor. So it's an example of power dynamics.
I don't send emails very often, thankfully, so that's why it doesn't bother me that much. But I do do the thing where if there's a back and forth over multiple emails, I get increasingly informal. No more salutations, no more closings, no more signatures. My responses may become single liners. Because at that point, it's becoming chat messages, but just over email.
I increasingly just ignore messages like that. If they can't be bothered, I can't either.
Absolutely. Further, punctuation gives your text a voice. It means the people you're messaging can hear your intention, how you meant to phrase something, where the emphasis is.
In short, it matters, and it takes just a moment - and yes, I do mean just a second or two per message once in the habit of doing so. Getting back to scrolling is not more important than taking an extra second for whomever I'm messaging.
When writing conversationally, casually, it seems that much of the nuance that was once carried by careful choice of language and punctuation has shifted to things like emoji, where a silly face can mean a myriad of things depending on anything from context to the meme of the moment.
It feels like technology has made communicating both cheaper and faster by intent, and by consequence, lazier and less impactful than it's ever been. I worry that we're constantly justifying how the current status quo is good enough and losing sight of how extraordinarily valuable good communication skills are. Hell, many of us don't even write our own messages anymore, choosing to let software speak our minds for us.
I like using proper punctuation, but there are some peculiarities depending on the medium. When I’m texting, I leave the final sentence unpunctuated unless it’s with an exclamation point or question mark. Ending with a period feels too heavy unless you’re trying to convey a serious tone.
I tend to punctuate where it matters, but not bother otherwise. So to me that means punctuate for Facebook posts, tildes, work messages, etc. Then not bother with text messages, notes for myself, etc. I do tend to view people who don't punctuate in professional environments as somewhat unprofessional and lazy, but at the end of the day I don't care that much.
Languages evolve and adapt over time and I'm sure the way we wrote 20 years ago would piss off someone from 50 years, as the way they wrote would someone 100 years ago. Lifes too short to care
At thease tymes, we look unto the work of the grait Dr Timothy Dexter to whom many complane that he hath put no stops I now put A Nuf here and thay may peper and solt it as they plese
''''''''''''''''''''’''''''""'''"'""'"""''''’'''''’""""''"""“"""""“ ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,...….......….............................................................::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; -----------. …...
I used to message with punctuation all the time. It became a problem at work apparently because people under me, in their 20s, thought I was serious and cold until they met me in person.
They then eventually told me it was scary to see punctuation because they worry they fucked up or something. Having punctuation is so polite that it feels similar to when your parent calls you by your full name. You know they're really mad.
I then thought it was just a Gen Z thing. Then one of my friends called me out on it mid conversation and asked why I was being so formal. As if something was wrong. I said that's how I always type, and they said "No. Millenials usually type without punctuation."
Then I got quite self conscious about it and trained myself to not use punctuation in my messages. At work or casually with friends. I still kept punctuation with clients and bosses.
But I kind of got tired of it one day. And went back to just typing however I felt like.
But my training didn't go away. So my messages now are a hybrid. You get punctuation most of the time, but sometimes it disappears.
My friends in my group chat sometimes make fun of me using punctuation though. But I don't care for it. I embrace it.
I think so, I intentionally omit hard stops when I’m texting or otherwise writing casual text, it’s ultimately more indicative of the flow of conversational speech, where people rarely take such long and intentional pauses unless it is a written speech that is being performed
There are alternative ways of indicating the end of a piece of a text as well, like a new line
If you want to see this taken to the extreme in a high-art fashion, read a cormack mccarthy book
I don’t think it really matters, anyhow, and it’s not a sign of moral or intellectual decay
I don't mind omitting some punctuation in casual text. What I'm referring to is unironically writing like @hungariantoast's comment, which has become more common for whatever reason.
In what contexts are people doing this in formal contexts? Do you have examples of like journalistic articles or other serious documents written like that?
Not in formal contexts, just online
I have a personal Telegram channel and I write basically like that intentionally as a stylistic choice. It makes it much less serious and gives a certain tone to the messages. It does take some effort, sometimes I have to rewrite a post multiple times to make sure it's easily readable without any punctuation.
I learned to type in the 8th grade on a typewriter and I had to learn punctuation, spacing, home row, all of that. So now I type quickly on keyboards and I automatically default to proper formatting. I express about a third of all of my sentiments in the form of GIFs in Discord in my personal life, and Teams at work, and everywhere else I am operating at a significant handicap. But...
i actually have to force myself to think about it to not use proper formatting
They told me that my lols and rofls would render English spoken online unintelligible, and maybe it did, but I don't see short form taking over anywhere but personal speech, and that's where it's always dominated. In my professional life people will use short form inter-personally, but when we have to address corporate, we swap to proper formatting. All articles I read are in proper formatting, as well. I see no problem with this; I don't think I could take seriously a run-on sentence trying to report the news of the day. But if you come at me with proper punctuation and formatting in private life, I might wonder why you're being so formal.
What I'm saying is... ngl i guess it pays to be multi-modal
There's a lot of comments in this thread talking about themselves and/or how text messaging has reasons for being more informal. Unfortunately, I know what OP is referring to and yeah, it's been getting a lot worse recently. I don't think the amount of non-punctuated posts have grown across the internet yet, but it does seem like more and more of them are getting upvoted to the front page/algorithmic feed of various sites. This in turn seems to be influencing more people to start posting in the same fashion.
It's very frustrating... I try not to be an old curmudgeon about it, and I generally count myself as an anti-decorum fighter against the fastidious. But it really sucks when it's the inciting title to a thread of discussion around something serious, because it then seems to attract more half-baked comments instead of participants that want to fully flesh out the topic. To be clear, Tildes doesn't seem to suffer from this yet. Other platforms like reddit and tech forums recently are getting slapped by run-on sentence gremlins unable to properly convey their thoughts without giving the reader a headache.
Capitalization, punctuation, and two spaces after every sentence: always! (Even in texts, chats, and gaming.) I like to think that if I'm ever under duress or impersonated, my family will know it by the lack of periods at the end of my text messages. I proudly wear the "Oxford Comma Preservation Society" joke t-shirt that my spouse got me last Christmas, I prefer logical quotations, and I know when to use "i.e.," vs. "e.g.," (with commas!), "less" vs. "fewer" (hello Stannis!), and "who" vs. "whom".
I may be showing my age as a Xennial engineer here, but I refuse to bow before the forces of entropy! (It's also quite possible that I may have some undiagnosed ADHD or autistic tendencies.) Moreover, I've been writing this way long enough that it's easier for my to just capitalize and punctuate everything consistently than it is for me to switch it off in less formal context, though the wording may more colloquial. If all that means that my writing may be mistaken for LLM output, then so be it.
Part of it is that I write as much for myself as others. First, writing helps me to organize my thoughts. I find that understanding something systematically and writing about it in a structured are closely interrelated. I may start more with one or the other, but the outcome of one tends to lead to the other. Second, I'm often forgetful, so detailed emails that I write for others do double-duty as notes for myself. The same goes for detailed commit messages, code comments, work-internal chat messages and wiki pages, text messages, posts, and so forth.
My 13 year old was just making fun of my wife yesterday for using punctuation and “texting like an old person”. It’s absolutely a thing now that young people avoid punctuation.
Punctuation is good when context is important.
Don’t get me started on Oxford commas…
just speaking for myself
Like many my age (31), my formative years included much, much time spent online interacting with strangers. Perhaps because it was simply part of the culture at the time, because I would type at age 10 on the Neopets forums as I do now on Tildes (though hopefully I'm much more coherent and less naive than I was at 10). I know some users here have brought up the... culture here as reminiscent of old internet boards and forums. I know that part of the draw of Reddit for me over, say, Tumblr or Instagram, was the same. Not that I need a 500 word statement on every little thing, and admittedly I don't think I've ever had an attention span that could handle some of the more... engaged? debates you might see here. But something like, say, witty Tumblr responses with all lower case, zero punctuation, sarcasm and irony cranked up to max - those just don't feel right to me. That's what I associate "not punctuating their sentences anymore".
And of course, I said "culture" but that's not all encompassing of the internet. Over time it just became simpler to speak without punctuation, particularly in video games. Heck, when I was maybe in my early 20s I'd talk to my friends about how I would deliberately disable auto-capitalization on smartphones because I wanted to be able to control that. There were times where full punctuation, dotted i's, crossed t's, were their own form of conveying seriousness and tone. And there were times when I genuinely wanted my messages to be read less seriously. When I think of how I might joke with some friends in person or verbally in a voice call, if I had to transcribe that dialogue without any additional side text on how the text would be read... sometimes it would just be all lowercase, no punctuation / minimal punctuation.
This might be completely different from what you were thinking when opening this thread because I admittedly don't have any thumb on the pulse of modern human interaction. As I write this I realize - hmm, is it possible you're even thinking of the way people may speak verbally without coherent, natural "stops"? Where do you observe these trends? I don't know! But I'd have this conversation with some friends when we'd reminisce on how much we've all changed regarding how we communicate with others online.
If you're talking about text messages, I don't really mind. A blank line works as a "." and most messages are short enough that you can understand them perfectly with little to no punctuation.
While I often write text messages formally, trying to be correct, I don't expect others to do the same. Text messaging is an informal context. I care about their correction about as much as I care about correction during in-person informal conversations. Not much.
I haven't noticed that shift in long-form, formal, or semi-formal contexts. I do care about correction in those contexts. I also care about literature, but I never read anything current, either in Portuguese or English. So I wouldn't know.
Every once in a while, someone writes long-form without capitalization. Every once in a while, I express my contempt for that. But that's another subject. Thankfully, lowercase long-form is still rare.
If we're talking exclusively about text messages, people have been talking about the death of proper language at least since the early 1990s, when I started using IRC. And here I am trying to write properly in a language that is not even my own. I'm not very worried. Young people like being random, and most people are very good at code-switching. That's just how language works.
I mix it up depending on the message, the medium, and the context. If I'm sending a standalone sentence to a friend, I probably won't capitalize it nor use any punctuation. If I'm trying to explain a more complex or nuanced idea that requires multiple sentences or paragraphs then I'm more likely to use proper punctuation, although I don't fret about the details.