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The message beyond the HN title actually has potential. However, the author focuses in some odd places for me. As far as punctuation, ending periods actually h
by adjkant 6y ago
The message beyond the HN title actually has potential. However, the author focuses in some odd places for me.
As far as punctuation, ending periods actually have negative emotion in text vernacular now for younger audiences and should almost never be used in 1-1 messaging. Exclamation points, commas, and question marks, great!
For abbreviations, it's simply know your audience. You should use them when everyone in the room knows them, but you have to think about that first before use. The step of thinking about it is a great mental step to add, but the article presents it more as a steadfast rule. Also, expanding them in parentheses can be a chance to educate your audience for the future even when you have people who don't know, like I'll do below :P
To me, the smallest point was actually the most interesting and valuable, and it was skated over entirely - communicating emotion and sentiment, particularly through emoji use. With WFH (Work From Home) especially, communicating emotion is very socially helpful. I've found a lot of engineers think "well I don't care/need so I'll skip the flowery additions for efficiency" and then leave many non-tech people and some engineering coworkers to decipher if this random slack ask is mad, passive aggressive, inquisitive, or a check-in. This has far worse effects longterm often than an unknown acronym.
Adding emojis can solve this, or if you don't like those, literally giving more social context in words can also do the trick. When we're talking in person, we always communicate emotion, even when it's not the primary purpose. I think many would do well to include that in their online messaging as well :)
- soggybutter 6y ago100% agree about ending periods. I always read those messages as being irritated or overly firm. Potentially worse, though, are people who have a habit of abusing ellipses (...) in weird places. My boss does this in virtually every sentence, sometimes multiple times, and it always comes off like he can't believe you'd say something so stupid
- necovek 6y agoI am not sure why would you think that... If a period is to make a statement firmer, ellipsis does it triple... Like that, right? ;)
- lapetitejort 6y ago...I have a coworker who starts nearly every sentence thus so, as if continuing from the last sentence, even if you haven't talked to him in a few days.
- WhyCause 6y agoI use the ellipsis at the start of an IM sentence primarily when I've accidentally hit enter mid-thought.
- djur 6y agoSomeone I converse with regularly online has a tendency to do this in a way that strongly conveys "your idiocy has left me speechless" in contexts where he seems to (or at least claims to) only intend "your position is surprising".
- iamdbtoo 6y agoI find this odd because, to me, attributing malice because of the presence of a period is something you do in your own mind. You don't know the emotional state of the person who sent it, so you think of the worst possible outcome, but both are equally likely in the moment. You're just as free to give them the benefit of the doubt.
- musingsole 6y agoIt's something people do in their own minds because experience generally proves out most people only use a period in a single statement message if they're emphasizing firmness. Those who do use the period and don't mean firmness are a minority and are generally demonstrating they aren't accustomed to chatting in text (or potentially have always been talking from a position of authority, so no one's mentioned how they're coming off).
- iamdbtoo 6y agoI don't agree that putting a period in casual textual communication is inherently hostile. I also don't agree that those who do are just simply unaware of the chaos they are causing. At the end, though, you're still making a judgement about someone with very little information and you have a choice not to do that.
- saurik 6y agohttps://newrepublic.com/article/115726/period-our-simplest-punctuation-mark-has-become-sign-anger https://newrepublic.com/article/115726/period-our-simplest-p...
- soggybutter 6y agoYou're right and I do try not to do that. But as someone who's used text based communication every day for more than half my life, there's definitely some unconscious bias I've developed towards specific behaviors that I don't think is random. I've talked to plenty of folks who feel the same, and there are a lot of memes out there that support it. At the end of the day, it's up to you as the communicator to try and convey what you really mean, and text is notoriously easy to misunderstand.
- molszanski 6y agoI often interpret ellipses at the end of a sentence as an inability to express oneself in a written form.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vangelis 6y agoWhat could he mean by that...? You're doing a great job...
- gundmc 6y agoI've noticed a quirk when communicating over IM with many of my Indian colleagues. They use two dots (..) really often and I'm not sure how to interpret it. If I view it as equivalent to a three for ellipsis, it often comes across as rude or passive aggressive which I can't believe to be the intention. Is anyone else familiar with this and can shed some light?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sk0g 6y agoNot sure if it helps, but in Hindi, the punctuation, roughly, translates like this: | => , || => . Could this be the reason?
- oceliker 6y agoI'm not Indian, but I used to do this a lot when I was younger. My thought process was that a single dot would come across as serious or passive-aggressive (there's a discussion about this phenomenon somewhere in this thread) and ellipses would similarly be rude. Two dots somehow seemed like a nice way to come across as more friendly, and/or indicate a tiny pause between sentences. I used to do this in the times when we were separately charged for every text with our cellular service. I'd try to fit as many sentences as possible to each sent message. With the rise of internet based texting, it became unnecessary to use sentence separators, because I could just separate them by sending multiple messages (and not use any punctuation at the end of each sentence, which is the current accepted "friendly" way of communication).
- Aeolun 6y agoMy BA’s often respond to messages with: ok.. And I’m left wondering if they just typed an extra period or whether they’re trailing off...
- soggybutter 6y agoI feel I need to come back and report that my manager just sent this in slack: "I Agree!!..."
- bccdee 6y agoI actually just posted about the ellipses elsewhere in this thread ... Much in the same way that carriage returns are used to signify new sentences instead of periods in certain internet environments, ellipses used to be common sentence-separators in other mediums during the mid-20th century ... Specifically, if you dig up old postcards from that time, you'll find them littered with ellipses
- lapetitejort 6y agoI regularly use sad emojis when I let my boss know I just screwed something up in production. For celebrations we use giphy.
- Zecc 6y agoHere's hoping your screwups in production become less regular. :)
- greggyb 6y agoI've come across the period-as-negative idea before. I communicate in text media to audiences ranging from people in their early twenties to several decades my senior. I strive to communicate similarly to all. This includes capitalization and punctuation. I've discussed the negative period with several folks in this range, and none indicate that they view my communication as abrupt, brief, or negative, but that they do sometimes notice that with others. I ultimately come to this conclusion. A period is a tiny piece of a message. If something so small makes your message seem in some way negative, then your communication is already on the margin. You should look at other areas of your communication to improve. My default view of messages in what seems quickly to be becoming the common text style (all lower-case with abbreviations and no punctuation, written in fits of stream-of-consciousness) expresses laziness and a sense of self-importance on the part of the author. I find that assuming good intentions of the author is a much better stance to take. Thus, I choose to interpret positively what might otherwise seem negative to me. If someone else is incapable of looking past a period, then my communication must be very poor indeed, and I must make efforts to improve it.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago> I ultimately come to this conclusion. A period is a tiny piece of a message. If something so small makes your message seem in some way negative, then your communication is already on the margin. You should look at other areas of your communication to improve. You're taking it all the way to an extreme where kids these days must be getting upset over periods in messages and wincing with tender emotions (which was a very popular takeaway when the study hit HN). But here's an actual quote: > University researchers examined how including or omitting a period in a one-word text response to an invitation — like “yeah,” “maybe” or “nope” — affected people’s understanding. “We found that if you put a period after those short, one-word responses, the people reading the texts … understand (it) as being more negative, less enthusiastic, than if they had no period,” co-author Celia Klin told Moneyish. “We’ve agreed that putting a period after a one-word response in a text conveys something like abruptness, annoyance, negativity.” Sounds pretty reasonable to me for SMS/WhatsApp texting, and definitely something I agree with since ending a one-word statement with a period when you otherwise never use periods is clearly a statement no matter how small. And of course, in typical fashion, word of mouth and the Chinese whispers game have bastardized that into what the above HNer claimed: "As far as punctuation, ending periods actually have negative emotion in text vernacular now for younger audiences and should almost never be used in 1-1 messaging."
- ajmurmann 6y agoYour mention of messages ending in a period and this topic in general really makes me recommend Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch. It's a book by a linguist about the evolution of language on the internet. It does a great job at not only showing how this evolution happened, especially around communicating emotions and things like sarcasm, but also at describing the different cohorts who started using the internet at different times and under different circumstances. It actually has changed how I write on slack. I'm now for example more deliberate about omitting or including periods, break up what before would have been a long, email-like message into smaller messages. It also made me aware that ellipses have different meaning for different age groups
- vharuck 6y ago>For abbreviations, it's simply know your audience I've learned to avoid abbreviations and acronyms whenever possible in writing. If it's fast back-and-forth messaging, that could be fine to save time typing. Otherwise, people are very good at seeing long names as single "symbols." For example, I don't use "CI" for "confidence interval" in reports. I just write both words every time. No confusion, and I doubt there's a difference in reading speed. Obviously, there are exceptions when space for text is limited (presentation slides, labels in a chart).
- u801e 6y ago> As far as punctuation, ending periods actually have negative emotion in text vernacular now for younger audiences and should almost never be used in 1-1 messaging. It seems that people read too much into the intent (imagined or real) in a text message rather than just the content. As an older user, I perceive messages that use text spelling (e.g. u instead of you or prolly instead of probably) as unprofessional, but I don't let that get in the way of the conversation
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Bedon292 6y agoI guess that is how I know I am getting old? I have never even heard of anyone thinking a sentence ending in a period is anything but normal. And I actually detest the use of exclamation points. They are almost always unnecessary. And I probably read too much into them, as opposed to others doing the same on periods. It is interesting though. Looking back at chat history. If I am not writing multiple sentences, and even sometimes when I am, I tend to leave off the last period. I think emoji reactions to messages, especially in off topic channels, are totally reasonable. And certain ones (+1, -1, 100, etc.) are OK for technical discussions. But don't feel people should be adding faces into the actual content of on topic work messages. But, the actual context in those conversations should be clear, and make them unnecessary. One thing that actually drives me nuts is when people will keep their messages short. Write 5-10 words of a thought out, hit enter, and keep on going. You end up getting 7 notifications in quick succession, and none of it is complete. Please, just write out your entire though out as one singular cohesive message.
- tashoecraft 6y agoWhen you're writing small, short sentences, there is something off putting about periods. It's just part of the how text based communication has become. Emojis are good because words can be interpreted with a tone that was unintended, and can lead to all sorts of communication problems. It's small and simple, but an appropriate emoji helps convey our emotions in a way that is more difficult to in short, text based messages. I agree about rapid short messages, I hate receiving 8 notifications about 1 short paragraph of text.
- Bedon292 6y agoI always attempt to write, even on Slack or other chat programs, in such a way that no unintended tone comes across. To me it feels like I have failed in communicating if an emoji is necessary to convey a message. I honestly cannot think of anywhere I could use them to make a message clearer. But, I will be asking a few folks if there is an issue with my communication, and if I can be more clear in any way. Including the use of emoji. To me, it also feels less professional, but this thread has opened my eyes to this bias I have. So I am going to attempt to make less of a judgement on this moving forward.
- jhayward 6y agoI am astounded that anyone thinks that adding emojis can solve anything related to clarity of communication. We might as well be interpreting Egyptian cartoushes, for the lack of clarity involved.
- rsfern 6y agoSeriously? I wonder how you feel about “/s” and similar? There are plenty of uses of emoji that don’t add clarity, but I think it’s a bit much to say they can’t be used in a way that adds clarity at all.
- jhayward 6y agoI've expanded on my objections a bit in a sibling comment, but to address "/s": it doesn't have many of the emoji drawbacks. It is literal shorthand for a well-defined word whose definition can be found. It is visually distinct, and follows the centuries of typographical design we use to acquire written symbols. And it refers to a well-known concept. So I have no objection to it. Of course there are some symbols which are easier to visually acquire, and seem to refer to well-defined concepts. But even the various smileys are unintelligible as to their meaning when taken as a group. So once one gets off the basic "smiling face/thumbs up/thumbs down" subset I'd say it is a disaster for communication in a professional setting, and is exclusionary in a way that its proponents actually want it to be - as an in-group indicator that makes them feel a part of something that "others" are not.
- bccdee 6y agoOk, but how do you feel about this? A laughing emoji would let us know that you think it's funny that people are this inarticulate, although it'd be a touch condescending. An eye-roll emoji would indicate a frustration with the problem, suggesting that it personally affects you in some way — perhaps your relatives are using too many emojis and it irritates you personally. A frown emoji, meanwhile, would suggest a more sincere concern for the state of written communication in our culture, and would imply that you think something important is being lost. Explaining the meaning of those three unicode characters in context took an additional 480 characters. Can you see why people use them? They're very efficient.
- userbinator 6y agoending periods actually have negative emotion in text vernacular now for younger audiences and should almost never be used in 1-1 messaging That is extremely problematic, since I've already lost track of how many misparses (and resulting conflict over misunderstanding the meaning) have happened because of someone who wrote what should be multiple .-separated sentences as a single long and unpunctuated stream of text. A memorable example: There is a huge difference between I didn't know that. He did it. and I didn't know that he did it.
- abacadaba 6y agoCorrect Form: I didn't know that. He did it
- bccdee 6y agoOnce multiple sentences are on the table, it matters a lot less. The real significant line is between "zero periods; none needed" and "one redundant period at the end."
- bccdee 6y agoYeah, the original poster is grossly exaggerating. "Never use periods in instant messaging" is a really strange thing to say. However, it's true that the messages > sure and > sure. will be interpreted slightly differently from each other.