Your penchant for proper punctuation may be sending the wrong messages in your texts. According to this story in The New Republic, ending a sentence with a period may signal aggression, anger or passive aggressiveness. The article sites a study from America University, which found that college students only use “sentence-final punctuation” in 39% of texts. (Presumably, when they are mad(!), wanting a reply (…) or being aggressive(.). In the article, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania said, “In the world of texting and IMing … the default is to end just by stopping, with no punctuation mark at all … choosing to add a period also adds meaning because the reader(s) need to figure out why you did it.” So stop using punctuation, or you’re going to sound angry! End of story. Share your thoughts …
