Comments

  4. birgerjohansson says

    Darn, “is” should be “are”.
    And plastic vaginas look like…I dunno. Maybe they look like some cyrillic letter? Maybe the cyrillic letter “Ye” looks like an ovary, so you should never end a text with it.

  6. says

    I looked through my text messages and this seems to be quite the norm. I use periods within the text but hardly ever at the end and so do most people I communicate with. But I often add an emoticon at the end to indicate mood, something that would be expressed with body language or tone of voice in a face to face situation.
    Different rules for different media.
    Sociolinguistics is fun!

  7. Georgia Sam says

    An act of psychological warfare? Ridiculous. Praise “The Elements of Style” & pass the ammunition. I shall continue to use periods in texts, & also to use commas, apostrophes, & semicolons properly, as well as the words “comprise,” “compose,” “convince,” & “persuade.” Call me an old curmudgeon if you will; I’m OK with that.

  8. latveriandiplomat says

    The fact that exclamation marks are a sign of greater sincerity is also different from all other media, I think.

    This is what happens when we let people make their own rules! :-)

  10. warney says

    PZ Myers,

    You’ve just jumped the shark(s) so far as I’m concerned.

    I’m no longer tolerating this form of bullying. I use punctuation and I’m proud to do so.

    You and your like are marginalising me ever further by the day.

  11. vereverum says

    It’s perfectly OK to end a sentence with a period; it’s a preposition you’re not supposed to end a sentence with.

  13. emc2 says

    I put periods in all the time. Don’t they know that pressing space twice on an iPhone will automatically put a period at the end of the previous word? Not a lot of effort in that.

  15. blf says

    Full stops aren’t rude. Txting is rude. At least when you don’t pay attention to where the feck you are walking, standing, or who is with you(with the possible exception of trying to ignore a pod of snarling peas (a strategy which won’t work, unless the txting is providing the coordinates for a nuclear strike, and even then it’s a bit dubious)).

  17. andyo says

    That’s nothing. You’re lucky you don’t text in Spanish and have to deal with those terrible people who start their questions with “¿”.

  18. Richard Smith says

    Even worse, Apple has taken over Spanish exclamations! It’s all iThis! and iThat! Shocking, I tell you! (Or would that be, “iYi, yi!” ?)

  19. quotetheunquote says

    andyo @17

    Well, at least they don’t start their sentences with periods, you have to give them that.

  21. says

    Sorry, but I can’t NOT end a sentence with a dot.

    (Unless it’s more appropriate to use a question mark or exclamation point, or occasionally an ellipsis.)

    Maybe I’m old-fashioned or some kind of punctuation pedant — I don’t care — but proper punctuation is important.

  22. birgerjohansson says

    chigau,
    good catch, I don’t have English as my first language, so body components in English -especially lady components- is not something I am much familiar with.

    BTW did not a dot mean “zero” in the original Indian/Arabic system? So a zero seems an adequate way to end a period. “Zero more Words in this sentence”

  23. chigau (違う) says

    birgerjohansson
    It’s not just you.
    Plenty of native English speakers don’t seem to distinguish between vagina and vulva.
    Don’t know about .=0
    .

  24. Saad says

    birgerjohansson, #22

    Yes, the dot is still used for zero in Indian and Arabic numbering. But unlike a period, it’s placed centered vertically instead of along the bottom of the line that you’re writing on.

    Formally it’s more like a small diamond shape, but in common writing, people write it as a dot.

  25. says

    Maybe I’m old-fashioned or some kind of punctuation pedant — I don’t care — but proper punctuation is important.

    But that’s the thing. A period at the end of a text message doesn’t have any function that isn’t already fulfilled by the fact that it’s the end of a text message.
    Somebody hit “send”, it’s clear that the sentence is finished. A question or exclamation mark would carry additional information, therefore they’re left intact, a period doesn’t.

    Funny enough, that hasn’t rubbed off on forum comments, apparently.

  26. quotetheunquote says

    But, Gilliell, it could have a function – if people choose to use it consistently.

    I would certainly understand the full stop to have a function, if I sent/read text often (which I don’t). Those rare times I do use texting, I find that it’s very easy to send by mistake – before one is actually finished. (This happens all the time on Skype anyway, I don’t know about other media). In that case, the full stop is just a quick way to reinforce the fact that the thought is complete. (I use an ellipsis to indicate that “more is coming”).

  27. grahamjones says

    I blame the Journal of Mathematical Biology. It insists that no punctuation be used at the end of captions to figures. It looks OK for a single sentence caption. But for others it is just weird