Three punctuation tips to write better text messages and not confuse different generations
- Ellipses, periods (full stops) and exclamation marks can be interpreted in different ways depending on a person’s age
- The exclamation point has been a point of contention amid Covid-19 as it can come across as ‘heartlessly chipper’, linguist Gretchen McCulloch says
As the global pandemic pushes more communication from in-person to via text, there is even greater opportunity for confusion over digital messages.
In the past six months, you may have appeared passive-aggressive in a text without even knowing because you used ellipses (yes, those three dots). Or perhaps that period you used made your tone appear curt when you were just trying to end a sentence. Maybe you read an exclamation point as shouting when it was intended to be friendly.
When it comes to texting, there can be plenty of tonal confusion, especially among people of different generations. It turns out there’s a reason for the disconnect that’s tied to when a person adopted digital communication in his or her lifetime.
Many young people have a “computer-first mentality” and choose different grammatical tools in messages compared to those who are generally older and grew up doing “more casual writing on postcards”, says linguist Gretchen McCulloch, author of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.
The good news: when you understand the reasoning behind the grammar used in a text from someone who has a different relationship with technology (and typically is of a different generation than you), you can better avoid miscommunication.