Ending your texts with a full stop is truly monstrous. We all know this. Grammar be damned, it just doesn’t look friendly.
Now a study has confirmed it. Researchers led by Binghamton University’s Celia Klin report that text messages ending with a full stop – or period – are perceived as being less sincere, probably because the people sending them are heartless.
I don’t use text speak, either. I text as I write in emails, blog posts and fiction – I use punctuation and fully formed words, phrases and sentences. In other-words, I use English. That way, the recipient will have a greater chance of understanding what I am saying. I appreciate this is a bit radical an’ all.
But, no, because I use full-stops, I’m heartless. Fuck me, what does using the semi-colon make me?
To test whether the full stop had become a social cue within the context of CMC, the researchers presented a small group (126 undergraduates — admittedly not representative of the entire global population, but at least fairly representative of the most prolific texters) with a series of exchanges framed as either text messages or handwritten notes.
Fucking waste of time, then. Junk science at its worst.
As in the example above (which I harassed a friend into making with me, lest you worry that I’m having drinks with a robot that doesn’t understand how to love) the experimental messages featured an invitation followed by a brief reply. When that reply was followed by a period, subjects rated the response as less sincere than when no punctuation was used. The effect wasn’t present in handwritten notes.
Wow! Proof. Not.
According to Klin and her fellow researchers, that’s an indication that the text message full stop has taken on a life of its own. It is no longer just the correct way to end a sentence. It’s an act of psychological warfare against your friends.
Fucking hellski!
Oh, yeah, the exclamation mark (that I only use rarely):
In follow-up research that hasn’t yet been published, they saw signs that exclamation points — once a rather uncouth punctuation mark — may make your messages seem more sincere than no punctuation at all.
Do you know what? Don’t bother with publishing it. It’s unadulterated claptrap.
“Texting is lacking many of the social cues used in actual face-to-face conversations. When speaking, people easily convey social and emotional information with eye gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses, and so on,” Klin said in a statement. “People obviously can’t use these mechanisms when they are texting. Thus, it makes sense that texters rely on what they have available to them — emoticons, deliberate misspellings that mimic speech sounds and, according to our data, punctuation.”
Or maybe – and I realise that this is pretty off the wall an’ all, use proper English with correct punctuation and spelling. And think before you send.
It’s no surprise that language is evolving in weird and potentially scary ways, because language has always done that. Just chalk this one up to human ingenuity — even when we can’t talk face to face, we’ll always find ways to be jerks to one another.
Well, yes, if you use text speak.
So take heed, members of pre-CMC generations: If you insist on grammatical correctness, you may suffer consequences.
Indeed. People might actually understand the message. Fucking idiots.
End of. Discuss. Full stop. Drops mike and walks away.
What a heartless retarded bastard I have become.
That must make me a “Heartless Bastard” as well (on the exceedingly rare occasions I send a text message).
As all those quotes contained sentences with full stops, I am forced to concluded that the person writing them was a heartless bastard
As well as fucking stupid…
“Fuck me, what does using the semi-colon make me?”
Seeing as it’s not in all languages, probably some sort of racist.
It looks like “clickbait” to me. For anyone who doesn’t know the term, that means an article that is written with the sole purpose of enticing people to click on it and share it with others, in order to generate page views and advertising revenue. A common clickbait tactic is to publish something that will make the readers angry, so that they will want to respond to the article and blog or tweet about how awful it is, thus giving it widespread publicity. But the fact that there is now so much clickbait in the online editions of British newspapers is a measure of how desperate they are to find some new revenue stream that will keep them afloat for another few years. It’s a symptom of a dying industry.
This.
Smartphones and tablets wouldn’t bother with predictive text systems if nobody used them. Thanks to this technology, and the ubiquitous grammar checker and spellchecker, it’s now more difficult to arbitrarily abbreviate words than it used to be unless you deliberately switch that stuff off.
In other words, the “126 undergraduates” must be clueless cretins. Damned right they’re “not representative of the entire global population” – most of whom, lest we forget, don’t even speak English.
Knowing what a semi-colon is and using it correctly probably makes u (see what I did there?)some king of graphical elitist; you will be one of the first against the wall!
Oh well, just another thing to add to the list of things I am already guilty of:
White,
male,
English,
Married,
Heterosexual,
Employed, in the private sector.
Anti EU
I am sure there must be more.
One day I will be an ethnic minority in my own country
Nope – none of you come close to me. I am HB par excellence:
I used to go to a hairdresser in an area which prided itself (absurdly) and still does (absurdly) on its sophistication. Several times, head pressed against the wash basin, I looked at the sign on the canopy outside
“Hair At It’s Best”
I could contain myself no longer one day and had to point it out. The reaction was, “Tsk”, and are you going somewhere special tonight?”