A case for using punctuation in Slack • Hacker News Board

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#171

Post by adjkant » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

Twisol wrote: post #162

stu2b50 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I think there's many times where a statement can clearly seem hostile, or jovial, at the same time, and adding some emojis to lean towards jovial will make it a 100% safe message. Sure, you can add context in other ways, but it's quick, easy, and effective. Is it unprofessional? Perhaps in an email, but I don't consider every slack message something that should be "professional" in tone. You don't speak p…

I have a small group of emoji that I turn to for this kind of color. :sweat_smile: for a note of self-aware awkwardness. :thinking: when I'm posing an idea without standing behind it too hard, or when my thoughts are continuing beyond the message I've just sent. A few others are not uncommon, but more situational. (I'm using their Slack codes here, since I'm not sure I can just embed them directly in an HN comment...…

This type of use is exactly what I was talking about in my original post. It does wonders for positive communication. Even if some don't see the need for it, as the article discusses, you need to consider your full audience!

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#172

Post by mvp » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #156

pmiller2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! Well, I'm so old, I remember having two spaces after every period. And, I, too, hate waking up to 12 notifications, of which 3-4 are usually pings to my team alias, and then seeing a bunch of DM notifications. It makes me feel like I missed something urgent, when, often, it's just people who hate putting periods after the end of their thoughts. Maddening!

To be honest, I have almost all mobile device notifications turned off. Though I realize some people are in groups that have more of an expectation of immediate response.

Exactly.. I was wondering the same. What notifications are these people talking about. First thing I do on my phone is to turn off all notifications.

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#173

Post by adjkant » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

iamdbtoo wrote: post #164

tobr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can apply the same reasoning to any of the myriad ways we pick up social, emotional clues from people around us. Facial expressions, body language, brevity, melody, choice of words, clothing, typography, use of emojis, and so on. All of these things are nuanced, vibrant, easily misjudged hints of what another person is feeling, how they see you, or how much they care. You can’t really choose freely how to interpr…

How you intepret those is absolutely a choice. If you do not have enough information to know 100% what the intention of the other person is, then wherever you land is a decision. If it's that the person is angry, that's your choice the same if you believe the person is not angry.

> If you do not have enough information to know 100% what the intention of the other person is

That's the thing - you almost never do.

> How you interpret those is absolutely a choice

The crux of the problem here is putting that choice on the reader instead of leaving them without one. Communicating emotion in text solves this issue of interpretation.

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#174

Post by MauranKilom » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

iamdbtoo wrote: post #164

tobr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can apply the same reasoning to any of the myriad ways we pick up social, emotional clues from people around us. Facial expressions, body language, brevity, melody, choice of words, clothing, typography, use of emojis, and so on. All of these things are nuanced, vibrant, easily misjudged hints of what another person is feeling, how they see you, or how much they care. You can’t really choose freely how to interpr…

How you intepret those is absolutely a choice. If you do not have enough information to know 100% what the intention of the other person is, then wherever you land is a decision. If it's that the person is angry, that's your choice the same if you believe the person is not angry.

That is entirely true, and I personally try to be very open-minded about how a particular message could have been meant. But you do have to make some decision regarding the interpretation (preferably the most favorable one) in order to compose an adequate reply.

And that's where things get difficult - at least in non-interactive environments. I've become very wary of the thousands of slight misinterpretations that my email messages might allow, and tend to rewrite most sentences once or twice to make the wording as unmistakable as possible (usually in a cycle of "how could this sentence be interpreted uncharitably?" -> fix it up).

With increasing daily email volumes I've had to tone that practice down (at least for less delicate messages) to get anything done at all. But you never really know how something was perceived unless it went really wrong.

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#175

Post by djur » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

Bedon292 wrote: post #127

musingsole wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's something people do in their own minds because experience generally proves out most people only use a period in a single statement message if they're emphasizing firmness. Those who do use the period and don't mean firmness are a minority and are generally demonstrating they aren't accustomed to chatting in text (or potentially have always been talking from a position of authority, so no one's mentioned how they…

I have been chatting via text, as a major form of communication, for more than 20 years and at least 2/3s of my life. Before this thread, I have never even contemplated a period having any meaning more than the end of a though. And I certainly had no position of authority, so that didn't affect anything. I am really curious how this evolved, and how I missed it being something people think. My biases tend to lean tow…

It's specifically something that came out of SMS, where people have traditionally conserved characters (and typing punctuation could be annoying on earlier phones). Intentionally using unnecessary punctuation in a context where it's not conventional seems like a shift to formality, or coldness. It's like a parent using their child's full name when they usually go by a nickname (or, god forbid, their full first AND middle name).

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#176

Post by adjkant » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

kps wrote: post #119

greggyb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come across the period-as-negative idea before. I communicate in text media to audiences ranging from people in their early twenties to several decades my senior. I strive to communicate similarly to all. This includes capitalization and punctuation. I've discussed the negative period with several folks in this range, and none indicate that they view my communication as abrupt, brief, or negative, but that they…

> I've come across the period-as-negative idea before. I've never come across the period-as-negative idea before. From the discussion here, it sounds like in-group signalling. For me, punctuation is an unconsious part of writing, and it would take special effort (or a browser extension) to remove it so as not to be marked as an outsider.

> From the discussion here, it sounds like in-group signalling.

I'm so confused why someone would jump to "I don't do it" to "it must be an in-group signal". What group would this even be?

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#177

Post by djur » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

lapetitejort wrote: post #74

necovek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why would you think that... If a period is to make a statement firmer, ellipsis does it triple... Like that, right? ;)

...I have a coworker who starts nearly every sentence thus so, as if continuing from the last sentence, even if you haven't talked to him in a few days.

Someone I converse with regularly online has a tendency to do this in a way that strongly conveys "your idiocy has left me speechless" in contexts where he seems to (or at least claims to) only intend "your position is surprising".

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#178

Post by Twisol » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

mjayhn wrote: post #165

neodymiumphish wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it done that way a lot where each small sentence is its own message. Even more annoyingly, they often do it in a main channel on Slack after the message they're responding to, instead of "replying in thread".

Purely anecdotal but I think it’s from irc/aim users (a lot of millennials/genx including myself) since long form communication wasn’t really a thing on there. I see some people write paragraphs as messages on discord servers and iirc that wasn’t technically even possible on irc and I feel like it’s even strange to see in the middle of lighter chatter. Also slack threads are awful, imo. I can appreciate them in certa…

> That #tagging/#threading feature available on the other slack/discord/teams competitor I can’t think of right now is something I really want.

Zulip, by any chance?

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#179

Post by mjayhn » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

Twisol wrote: post #178

mjayhn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely anecdotal but I think it’s from irc/aim users (a lot of millennials/genx including myself) since long form communication wasn’t really a thing on there. I see some people write paragraphs as messages on discord servers and iirc that wasn’t technically even possible on irc and I feel like it’s even strange to see in the middle of lighter chatter. Also slack threads are awful, imo. I can appreciate them in certa…

> That #tagging/#threading feature available on the other slack/discord/teams competitor I can’t think of right now is something I really want. Zulip, by any chance?

Yes! Thank you, I haven’t been lucky enough to try it. Always slack nowadays..

Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack

#180

Post by djur » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

comeonseriously wrote: post #28

jasode wrote: post #19

I can't debate what some perceive as costly because it's an honest reaction to reading some forms of text. In my case, all lowercase and lack of punctuation don't bother me or slow me down. (I'll agree on uncommon acronyms hindering understanding.) To reduce some frustrations... listen to linguist McWhorter explaining that people should think of texting (or Slack) as "transcribed informal speech" -- instead of formal…

>listen to linguist McWhorter explaining that people should think of texting (or Slack) as "transcribed informal speech" -- instead of formal writing.[1] I can't watch the video right now, but even in informal speech, I hear periods and commas. I think that those are necessary for communication. Not including them, as I mention in another comment above (or below?), induces a cognitive load on the reader. Nobody shoul…

Sure, commas should be used when grammatically necessary, but a period before a newline is not going to make a big difference one way or the other in terms of cognitive load.