It’s interesting to me that people put so much effort into creating rules around what subtle punctuation differences mean when there’s a billion reasons not to assume we know what any of it means. Typos, being in a hurry, being a different person with different opinions… Basically texting is like 50% at best for communicating emotions even if we don’t make these random assumptions.
I think partly it’s the same thing as slang - it identifies you as part of a group and, more specifically, not the same as those boring oldies. Only boring oldies finish texts with a full-stop !
I mean, that’s exactly my point. Unless you can know people are paying full attention, didn’t make a mistake, and also know/subscribe to the exact same rules, then the potential for misunderstanding is increased not decreased.
It’s not fundamentally different to body language or tone in person. How do we know what a gesture is supposed to convey? Everyone needs to be on the same page, right?
And yet, it seems to work. Just as phone texts seem to work. Humans are excellent at language, we pick these things up subconsciously and through exposure over time to people’s/the same person’s texts
If you want things to move in that direction, it takes momentum. If nobody does it for fear of confusion, then it will never change. So I say we make that little effort, and explain ourselves if need be.
It’s interesting to me that people put so much effort into creating rules around what subtle punctuation differences mean when there’s a billion reasons not to assume we know what any of it means. Typos, being in a hurry, being a different person with different opinions… Basically texting is like 50% at best for communicating emotions even if we don’t make these random assumptions.
I think partly it’s the same thing as slang - it identifies you as part of a group and, more specifically, not the same as those boring oldies. Only boring oldies finish texts with a full-stop !
Tone is very hard to convey through text. I think rules like these can be helpful to get more information across without having to type more words.
I mean, that’s exactly my point. Unless you can know people are paying full attention, didn’t make a mistake, and also know/subscribe to the exact same rules, then the potential for misunderstanding is increased not decreased.
It’s not fundamentally different to body language or tone in person. How do we know what a gesture is supposed to convey? Everyone needs to be on the same page, right?
And yet, it seems to work. Just as phone texts seem to work. Humans are excellent at language, we pick these things up subconsciously and through exposure over time to people’s/the same person’s texts
If you want things to move in that direction, it takes momentum. If nobody does it for fear of confusion, then it will never change. So I say we make that little effort, and explain ourselves if need be.
I say let’s embrace trying to be clear by using more words, not less. Within reason anyhow.
Using more words to describe emotional content is not really how humans use language, but you do have the next best thing, which are tone indicators