This post about people attempting to interpret the tone of texts / emails from older people is pretty spot on. Since my mom finally got a smartphone, her abrupt, weirdly capitalized texts always confuse me, but I’m pretty used to it now. You just have to understand different typing styles. Also don’t assume they’re being passive aggressive, even though it may come across that way. This post goes into the meanings in more detail:
(via: Premium Internet Curation / Dope-A-Meme)
I am one of those older people, and we were taught to think the way that we write or talk. We use the rules of grammar we were taught to use when writing. Take a copy writing course sometime. That will actually give an insight as to why we text the way we do. Grammatical structure usually does not change.
Absolutely correct!!!! Young people need to stop seeing all text as some attitude, when in fact, it is just a message.
Why do older people need to change, you know how hard it is to relearn something you’ve been doing the same way for 40+ years, why can’t everyone just agree to be a little lenient, and ask questions to learn to adapt as best they can to everyone else’s unique styles instead of thinking that everyone is the same as you for whatever reason.
It is essentially an accent, and there’s a large community that uses it in such a way that they all convey their meanings to one another accurately. Which makes it just as correct as another linguistic group’s usages.
One of the huge gripes from us ‘older’ folks when texting first started was the inability to express tone. Time to learn something new. Anyone got a style guide?
Ultimately you don’t have the space for your words to sufficiently express emotion, and you’re not crafting poetry, so the custom is to write like you are an excited small child. Channel your inner 9 year old who put three exclamation marks after something they were excited about but didn’t feel the need to end a sentence with a period.
If you would like to write like this, you may need to get over a feeling that you sound like an airhead. You probably don’t. And if you do, it just makes you seem young at heart.
For more specifics- it seems that punctuation is VERY important. But it is often important to leave out.
For some reason, ending a sentence with a period has a permanent sense of finality- like “I never want to talk to you again.”
Use punctuation marks a lot. Just spam them if you want to express excitement, happiness, etc. This is mostly needed as part of interjection comments (like “Hurrah!” or “Yay!” or “What?!?”).
Emoji faces can pretty much stand in for emotional exclamations as well. Confused Face, Sad Face, Happy Face, etc. That’s probably a good way to go most of the time. Eggplants mean sex, but aside from that they’re pretty intuitive.
If you are expressing something neutral, it is very important that you not punctuate it at all. Definitely don’t end it in a period.
… usually means that you’re saying something sarcastic. … expresses that there’s more you aren’t saying, and so people will read the statement as sarcastic. If you find you want to use something like that use a dash instead.
Quotation marks still express direct quotes. If you are quoting only a single word in a sentence then what you’re saying is “Their words, not mine.” If you would like to emphasize something, instead surround the word with dashes or put it in all capital letters. Here’s an example
“I “want” to go.” is saying that you really don’t want to go.
“I WANT to go” is expressing that you really do want to go.
“I -want- to go” means the same thing as the one above.
“I want to go…” means that you left out a “but something something not really” clause from your sentence.
Gah – why are none of you referencing Gretchen McCulloch who did exactly this, posts about exactly this, and wrote a GREAT book about this “Because Internet”. One core tenet which I think helps older people (I’m an old) understand is that until phones/texting, there simply wasn’t anything much in the way of informal writing. All writing was the equivalent of standing at a podium making a speech (formal speech). So now we have informal speech and people who don’t know that is a thing and/or don’t know the rules around it. I cannot recommend her and her writing enough!
Just appreciating your reference to Gretchen McCulloch. I loved her book so much.
I am an older person who first used email in the 1970s and used the Internet before the World Wide Web existed (remember Usenet?) I dealt with people from around the world regularly for decades. I learned something long ago. Assumptions about how your attitude will be interpreted are very often wrong, unless you know the recipient well. Similarly you should not assume you know a senders mood.
I get that texts lack many of the clues that normal speech has, that it is tempting to use punctuation to substitute for such clues, and that within a group a set of conventions aids communication. But it is foolish to assume that everyone knows your own groups rules or that they apply to everyone.
Maybe a full stop is rude in your group, but claiming that people who don’t know that are wrong is itself wrong. You might think your conventions are intuitive, but they rarely are. Customs are local, not universal.
Be generous. Assume that a stranger is well meaning, even if by your customs the meaning would be rude. Ask for clarification if you are not sure. Don’t exclude people because they don’t know your customs.