The care and thought you put into your writing, regardless of medium, says everything about how (and how much) you care and are thinking about your audience.
A case for using punctuation in Slack
51–60 of 274 posts
Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack
#52Unfortunately, text (or Slack) messages with a period at the end are also perceived as less sincere, and sometimes passive-aggressive: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2... https://lifehacker.com/dont-use-periods-in-texts-1843744818
From the WaPo article you linked, regarding a period at the end of a sentence:
> that's an indication that the text message period has taken on a life of its own. It is no longer just the correct way to end a sentence. It's an act of psychological warfare against your friends.
It's so bizarre that people perceive some nefarious intent because a sentence ends with a period.
Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
So again, people below 20 dictate what everyone else must do. It's a race to the bottom.
It's pretty common with people I know born from 1980 and beyond. Of course, it gets more common the closer their year of birth is to the aughts. But I guess you are right, everyone doing it today was under 20 at some point.
As someone born in the late 80s I've only heard about it from the press. I really sometimes omit periods in one-sentence text messages, but sometimes I don't, and it wouldn't come to my mind to ascribe any semantics to this.
My personal nitpick is people writing a stream of one-sentence messages without punctuation instead of a longer structured message - that definitely carries the connotation of unstructured thinking to me - but it doesn't have much to do with full stops per se.
Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack
#54There is a cargo-cult tech management trend where people use low-effort, sloppy messages and even rudeness as a status signal. I get that the simplest things are the important ones, and wall of text details are usually prevarication, but Slack isn't Tinder. Like project managers think they're channelling Bezos with "?" messages. I can see how some people interpret "stupid" as "powerful," when that's their experience…
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Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack
#55I feel like (so, of course, this is how I use instant messaging) periods at the end of a message suggest the logical conclusion of a thought, and are far too formal to use with every message. Email, sure, but not chat. (I do use question marks and capitalize in general, but periods in particular seem strange to me.)
Same, but not sure why now that you mention it. I'm a stickler for grammar, oxford commas and all, but in messaging, periods feel...rude at times. I can't explain why, perhaps it is the 'conclusion in thought' aspect.
This discussion is really confusing me. Are people talking about periods being negative when used anywhere? when used in the last sentence in a multi-sentence message? when used at the end of a single sentence/thought message?
Confused.
Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
One can use properly-punctuated and thoughtful but terse messages to communicate with both clarity and importance. With care, short messages can be very effective.
Agree. And I think “with care” is the important piece here. Using a simple Bezos like “?” is the opposite of that.
The "?" has its reputation from what the institution and leadership appears to have created around it. That Amazon's "?" means "Drop everything and get back to me within a day because it may be of great priority to the company" is an artifact created through years of interaction.
"?" and "!" are great for a quick/informal communication of curiosity or interest.
If my partner gets an unexpected bill in her inbox and sends over a friendly "?", it doesn't carry anywhere near the meaning that Bezos intends. If I got one, it'd mean something like, "Hey, this is odd. Do you know where it came from?" It is all about broader context.
Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack
#57Acronyms are such a lossy communication mechanism; Last week;
GTM.
Go To Meeting Google Tag Manager Go to Market Good to Me
It's so frustrating when external requests without context come to me with this.
Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack
#58As someone of the younger generation who grew up always using mostly proper punctuation over texts, and avoided abbreviations for common terms this hits home.
I'm 28 for reference, and I get VERY different vibes from those younger than me who join slack, and those older (40+ or so). The difference in meaning for different punctuation for these crowds is SO evident, I feel like I'm always playing translator for even the language I grew up speaking and writing.
The biggest example of this is the ellipsis among the older crowd. In informal messaging that I grew accustomed to it went from being overused, to nowadays seeming like you are being sarcastic or angry about something. So among the younger crowd I see it almost never used anymore. On the other hand the older generations picked it up from how we used to use it, as a sort of pause. But they co-opted it as probably the most common punctuation used in their messaging. I'm not joking when I will sometimes receive a message from an older coworker that will contain an ellipsis every 5 words or so.
It's always been interesting deciphering the actual meaning of some messages based on solely age of the sender.
This all to say, deciphering punctuation at all in informal writing is an interesting game.
Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack
#59The message beyond the HN title actually has potential. However, the author focuses in some odd places for me. As far as punctuation, ending periods actually have negative emotion in text vernacular now for younger audiences and should almost never be used in 1-1 messaging. Exclamation points, commas, and question marks, great! For abbreviations, it's simply know your audience. You should use them when everyone in th…
100% agree about ending periods. I always read those messages as being irritated or overly firm. Potentially worse, though, are people who have a habit of abusing ellipses (...) in weird places. My boss does this in virtually every sentence, sometimes multiple times, and it always comes off like he can't believe you'd say something so stupid
Re: A case for using punctuation in Slack
#60I feel like (so, of course, this is how I use instant messaging) periods at the end of a message suggest the logical conclusion of a thought, and are far too formal to use with every message. Email, sure, but not chat. (I do use question marks and capitalize in general, but periods in particular seem strange to me.)
Could you explain this more because it's completely foreign to me. For me a period is the end of a sentence. It has nothing to do with ending the message I'm trying to get across. Is this a cultural or generational or professional field difference? I'd never heard of the idea that a period would be too formal in any context.
It made more sense when I followed some other links in this discussion. Read this:
Hey.
Statement: We got the tickets for tonight!
Response: Yay.