Apparently, I'm strange in this (meaning HackerNews) group of people. I've been an avid instant messenger for several years; and, while I consistently try to ha

Apparently, I'm strange in this (meaning HackerNews) group of people. I've been an avid instant messenger for several years; and, while I consistently try to have correct, or at least almost-correct punctuation in my instant messages, as well as a love for the semi-colon, I tend to finish my instant messages without a period. I finish posts on message boards like this one with them; but, when I'm using an IM client, then period follows this article's alleged usage of meaning irritation or annoyance. Notably, this only applies to the last sentence in a message and only when the messages are between 0 and 1 paragraph. I haven't analyzed my own chat-style writing beyond a single paragraph, so I have no comment around anything beyond that. The people I know tend to be the same, as far as I know, ending sentences without a period. We do often end them with things other than a period, though, like exclamation points, question marks or a few other group-specific symbols, such as emoticons, to make sure that it's known the message is ended and it is of a particular tone. The period is just one of those tones and that tone is almost always perceived as a sharp one, unless it is one of the group that has a rabid dedication to the period-is-end-of-sentence style. All of that said, the people I tend to speak with also tend to have strong pet-peeves around they're/their/there, than/then and other commonly misrepresented words. They also tend to demand that people spell out whole words rather than using r for are and u for you, unless you're being ironic. Punctuation is very important to us, we have just redefined the terminating mark. Language is interesting.