When it comes to texting, the period, full stop, point—whatever you call it—has been getting a lot of attention.
People have begun noticing slight changes to the way our smallest punctuation mark is deployed, from declarations that it’s going out of style to claims that it’s becoming angry.
What they’re actually noticing is written language becoming more flexible, with texting possessing its own set of stylistic norms (sometimes informally called “textspeak” or “textese”).
The period is merely one example of this shift, a change that has opened up new possibilities for communicating with written language. Just as we have different styles of speaking in different situations, so do we have context-dependent styles of writing.
Reading Between the Periods
Though periods can still signal the end of a sentence in a text message, many users will omit them (especially if the message is only one sentence long). This tendency now subtly influences how we interpret them.
Because text messaging is a conversation that involves a lot of back-and-forth, people add fillers as a way to mimic spoken language. We see this with the increased use of ellipses, which can invite the recipient to continue the conversation. The period is the opposite of that—a definitive stop that signals, as linguistics professor Mark Liberman has explained, “This is final, this is the end of the discussion.”
For some, this can appear angry or standoffish.
Earlier this year, psychologist Danielle Gunraj tested how people perceived one-sentence text messages that used a period at the end of the sentence. Participants thought these text messages were more insincere than those that didn’t have a period. But when the researchers then tested the same messages in handwritten notes, they found that the use of a period didn’t influence how the messages were perceived.
In a 2007 study by linguists Naomi Baron and Rich Ling, multi-sentence text messages often had punctuation to indicate where the sentences stopped, but only 29 percent of these texts had punctuation at the very end of the message. The reason, Baron and Ling explain, is that “the act of sending a message coincides with sentence-final punctuation.”
Situational Switches
But of all the things to feel when seeing a period at the end of a text message—why insincerity?
The answer could have something to do with a term used by linguist John J. Gumperz: “situational code-switching,” which is when we change how we talk depending on where we are, who we’re talking to or how we’re communicating.
A common example is the way we talk in a job interview versus at a bar with friends. Typically, a speaker will use much more formal language in an interview than when hanging out with peers. If you talked to your friends the same way you talked during a job interview, it would probably give a stilted, distant feeling to the conversation.
Scholars originally investigated situational code-switching in spoken language because spoken language was used in both casual and formal settings. In the past, written language was almost always tinged with a level of formality because it was associated with permanence in books and written documents.
However, now that text messaging and social media have given their users an outlet for casual written language, differences between writing styles can be seen.
The use of the period is one example of situational code-switching: When using one in a text message, it’s perceived as overly formal. So when you end your text with a period, it can come across as insincere or awkward, just like using formal spoken language in a casual setting like a bar.
