You’ve probably experienced the difficulty of conveying emotion in text conversations.
Emoji can help with that, but so can thepunctuationandformattingyou use.
One of the most powerful punctuation marks intext messagingis the humble period.
Joe Fedewa / How-To Geek
The End.
Punctuation has a couple of different purposes.
The second is for setting the tone—question marks and exclamation points tell us how a sentence sounds.
Related:Here’s Why the Ellipsis Is So Terrifying When Texting…
The latter is what often comes into play with text messaging.
Messages that end with different punctuation marks—especially a period—can have decidedly different tones.
The message with the period at the end is very abrupt.
It sounds almost rude or like something serious needs to be discussed.
What’s Wrong With a Period?
It’s all about theinformal natureof text communication.
Related:Why Is Texting in no caps So Trendy?
See, texting is different than email.
That’s why we still use formal salutations and signatures.
Texting, on the other hand, is more like an in-person conversation.
Over time, using punctuation in text messaging has been seen as an “extra step.”
Now they’re thinking: “Why did they do that?
What’s wrong?”
The situation mentioned above doesn’t happen if the person always ends messages with a period.
However, if that’s out of character, the alarm bells start ringing.
That’s what’s important to keep in mind when you’re sending and receiving text messages.
Everyone has their own personal way of speaking, and that comes through in the text too.
Language is a big, messy thing thatwe’re all trying to use in a million different ways.
Sometimes a period is just a period, but sometimes it’s much more.
Related:Yes, Emoji Have Multiple Meanings Too
