Now, Something Important

For John, BLUF:  Sometimes it is hard to keep up.  Sometimes the real news leaps ahead of attempts at humor.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Are Your Texts Passive-Aggressive?  The Answer May Lie In Your Punctuation

From NPR, by Associate Danny Hensel, 5 September 2020.

Here is the lede plus six:

Katherine Rooks remembers when she first learned that a punctuation mark could wield a lot of power.

The Denver-based writer had sent her high school-aged son a text message about logistics — coming home from school.

"I could tell from his response that he was agitated all of a sudden in our thread.  And when he came home, he walked in the door and he came over and he said, 'What did you mean by this?'"

Rooks was confused. How could an innocuous text message send confusion?

"And so we looked at the text together and I said, 'Well, I meant, see you later, or something.  I don't remember exactly what it said.'  And he said, 'But you ended with a period! I thought you were really angry!'"

Rooks wasn't angry, and she explained to her son that, well, periods are how you end a sentence.

But in text messaging — at least for younger adults — periods do more than just end a sentence:  they also can set a tone.

Who knew?

If the "full stop" punctuation can cause such anxiety, one wonders what an exclamation point might do.  Or one of the colons.

I still don't know when to put punctuation inside or outside a quote mark, so this new wrinkle has me totally flumoxed.

But remember, it is NPR, who told us Looting was OK.

Regards  —  Cliff