Full Stop: The Period Isn’t Dead
To punctuate or not to punctuate?
To punctuate or not to punctuate?
In my house, we end sentences with a period. The period is good for that, and that’s how I’ve used it for as long as I could write. The period, to me, is neutral. It’s informative. It carries no emotional payload, like the exclamation.
But I am an old man and I use English like a codger. Apparently, kids these days see the end-of-sentence period differently, especially when it comes to their preferred mode of written communication, the text message. For them, closing a text with a period can be used to signal aggression or anger.
You know what I think of that? I think it’s great. As others have written, in a text message you have the freedom to use the “Send” button to end a phrase, a freedom that doesn’t exist in longer-form writing. In text messages, the period thus becomes superfluous, freeing it to be used for another purpose: Emphasis.
While I am accustomed to ending sentences with a period no matter what medium I’m writing in, I do not want to be an absolutist (a “grammar Nazi”) about it, and I don’t think you should be one either. Language lives in the people who use it. As people, cultures, and technology change, so does language itself.
The challenge in any communication — and the central question of etiquette, which is what this blog is about — is the degree to which you are aware of and listening to the people you are interacting with, and the degree to which you are willing or able to modify how you transmit your message.
I, for one, am willing to forgo the period in a text message to avoid having a teenage recipient think I am angry when I am not. And I’m willing to overlook, forgive, or adapt to text messages from people who use punctuation differently than I was taught.
Does this require learning a new dialect of English? Yes. But that is hardly a great new skill. Code swtiching is something we all do, often subconsciously, when we move between groups.
Obviously, there are a lot of opportunities to use a new lingo wrong, and to come off as inauthentic. Politicians get this wrong all the time, and they’re professional code-switchers. But speak a new dialect often enough with people to whom you can listen with all your heart, and eventually it becomes natural. It doesn’t mean giving up your native tongue either; you’ll be able to switch back easily enough.
So drop the period if it helps smooth things over. Or, if you’re a teen, throw one onto the end of the sentence when you’re texting your dear old dad. Would it kill you to write like a grownup?
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Image source: Wikipedia (modified). License: CC BY-SA 3.0
