Thursday 4 January 2018

full-stop or situational switching

Learning why some can interpret a text message ending with a period as either hostile, insincere or overly formal and that the ability to detect punctuation out of place (not grammatically but contextually) can signal greater social literacy made me reflect on how I’ve nearly completely eschewed periods and commas in favour of quiver of emojis to break up a telegram—but hope that I’m upholding good orthography elsewhere and for other occasions and forums. Here and here are a few other novel ways that new forms of communication are changing the way we frame our words. What changes or tendencies have you noticed in the ways you dash off notes to one another? How much more weight now is attached to a tittle and a jot?