Full stop to full stops: a rant.

Rhiannon L Cosslett is a novelist and journalist for The Guardian newspaper. A little while ago she posted this on Twitter:

Older people – do you realise that ending a sentence with a full stop comes across as unfriendly to younger people?

Well, no, as an older person I hadn't known that. 

As if unfriendly weren't bad enough, a study at Binghamton University on 2015 asked 126 undergraduates about punctuation in text messages, and it turned out those which ended with a full stop were perceived to be less sincere.

Unfriendly and insincere. The word passive-aggressive has been used in this context, too. 

Wow. The power of a dot.

There are two reasons put forward to explain the problem. Firstly, a full stop is seen to be a bit down-beat for a cheerful message, and therefore a sign of insincerity. Secondly, a short text message has so little content that even the punctuation becomes extremely significant and has to bear a lot of meaning.

I can think of another couple of reasons, too. First, down the centuries people, and young people in particular, have always enjoyed a good wallow in self-pity and victimhood; and, second, they've always also enjoyed a good violent reaction to...almost anything. 

Still, I suppose that if people have the time and energy for extreme reactions to punctuation then there can't really be too much else wrong, can there, so this is good news, really.

Sorry: really!

Thing To Use Today When Addressing A Younger Person: patience. This word comes from the Old French, from the Latin patientia, endurance, from patī, to suffer.

(No, no, I know that it doesn't matter a bit what older people feel when they see a text message without a full stop...)