Texting is something I’ve been doing since we got computers at work in 1990’s. Sure, I had a modest “hobby” computer at home, but that was only to allow me the ability to teach myself to write code.
That little computer can be viewed more of a toy than a real tool, still I learned DOS and the fact no one would ever use a computer if they needed to type out commands; there were not desktop icons representing the point and click factors we have today.
Likewise, email was as arduous – even at work – because those computers, too, were DOS-based and required typing out commands such as SEND, OPEN, EXIT, and DELETE, to make things happen.
There was no “texting” as such. In fact, everything was texting, and I disliked it.
Fast forward 25-years, or so, and today we have phones that are not only free of wires attached to the wall, that can outperform my trusty hobby computer and work machine, both.
Back when, kids began using texts to be not only communicative with one another, but also secretive. Texting is mostly silent, save for the little clicks replicating typewriters of yore, an electronic noise that can be turned-off.
In the early days, kids in schools texted each other with aplomb passing cryptic messages around, not unlike I used to with the benefit of paper written upon with pencils. Those childish informal notes not only mocked fellow classmates, but also informed others via an ersatz underground grapevine.
Endings were often swift once the parochial school nuns made the discovery of those pieces of paper and meted out justice with long, wooden pointers in the cloak rooms. And so it went right through high school until we discovered girls. But I digress.
There’s a little fish wrapping tool out there titled The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man in the Milky Way.
He not only owns The Post, but also Amazon, a company that sells everything including books. You’d think that someone so invested in the written word would do his best to maintain a sense of decorum when it comes to, well, the written word. Of course, you’d be wrong.
A 2015 article appeared in the December 8th online edition of The Post, entitled “Study confirms that ending your texts with a periods is terrible.”
This eye-catching heading made me go back for a closer examination.
“Ending your texts with a period is truly monstrous. We all know this. Grammar be darned, it just doesn't look friendly,” read the first paragraph.
It seems someone named Celia Klin, “wrote that text messages ending with a period are perceived as being less sincere, probably because the people sending them are heartless.”
All this came as a giant surprise to me inasmuch as I spent lots of time learning how to read and write according to specific rules at the hands of nuns and lay people, alike, for decades.
Of course some of you are questioning the value of those years of education by reading my offerings and thinking everyone involved would be better off with a stern beating rather than a diploma, or two.
Evidently a study of texters – a group whose identity is very nebulous, probably cohorts of Celia Klin – determined that texts ending in periods gave the readers a sense they were “less sincere” than those without a period at the end of the sentences.
Well, I recall a book from Don Marquis written in 1916, entitled “Archy and Mehitabel.”
Marquis was a writer for
It was very entertaining, however it was “written” by Archy, the cockroach, who was too small to effectively operate an old, manual typewriter. In order to add punctuations and capital letters, both the appropriate key, in addition to the “Shift” key, needed to be depressed simultaneously. That feat was impossible for such a small critter.
As such, the entire book was written without punctuations and capitals.
Not unlike The Post story, punctuation is not being used, but for entirely different reasons. One doesn’t use periods because it may offend the reader, while one doesn’t use periods because of logistics.
Is capitalization next to go?
