Science Has Called Out People Who End Text Messages With Periods Big Time
by N/A, 10 years ago |
2 min read
I am a staunch advocate of proper grammar, but even I am very careful with my period usage because quite frankly, ending texts with a period just makes you sound pissed. And now science is on my side.
A study conducted at Binghamton University polled 126 students about punctuation in texts.
They were shown invitation questions with a simple answer response (some with and some without final periods).
In the end, students had rated texts ending in periods less sincere than those without any punctuation.
That "Sounds good." doesn't sound so sincere to me, either.
"People obviously can't use [social cues] when they are texting. Thus, it makes sense that texters rely on what they have available to them -- emoticons, deliberate misspellings that mimic speech sounds and, according to our data, punctuation."
According to lead researcher, Celia Klin, symbols in texts do meaningful work in conveying what facial expressions, body language, eye gazes, pauses, and tone do in face-to-face conversation.
A follow up study also showed that ending a text with an exclamation point is found to be even more sincere.
So remember to spell check AND review your punctuation marks before hitting "Send."
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