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Make a point and keep using full stops
Mike Crutchley • 17 September 2020
I am not angry. I don’t know why you think I am.
I have read several articles recently about young people wanting full stops to be because they show anger and irritation. Is this the final chapter for one of the most important punctuation marks in the English language?
Stop it
When I first read about calls to ban full stops from messages because of their abrupt and unfriendly connotations, I had to check to make sure it wasn’t April 1 – or April Fool’s Day delayed because of lockdown.
But it wasn’t a wind-up. It came as no surprise that it is Generation Z – teenagers and those in their early 20s – who are being offended by the full stop and correct punctuation used by “older” people.
Without wanting to give lessons in grammar and punctuation – there are people who do it far better than me – words without punctuation lose meaning and emphasis and can be interpreted to mean the opposite of what the author intended.
A full stop signifies the end of a sentence or thought, the end of a paragraph, or the end of a message or report. Hilarious examples of punctuation fails are highlighted in Lynn Truss’s book Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
Proper punctuation
I am, by nature and profession, a punctuation pedant, and my family will testify that text and social media messages from me have commas, apostrophes and full stops, and capital letters where they should be.
I grew up and have worked within these grammatical conventions and, typos and autocorrects apart, they help to convey a message clearly.
The issue has arisen because the younger generation has grown up using smart phones and sending short text messages without punctuation, especially full stops.
Rewriting the rules
Should we rewrite the rules of punctuation, creating safe spaces from full stops, or encourage Generation Z to fall into line?
Most people have accepted the convention that text and social media messaging in capital letters signifies anger and even the most technologically challenged can work out how to change the case of letters on their keyboards.
So why – out of habit or laziness – should another set of rules have to be adopted? And what level of anger have you reached if you type in capitals and use full stops? Are you furious, raging, apoplectic?
Research into this – yes, really – has discovered that young people tend to send separate thoughts in separate messages, and only end with a full stop to indicate they are annoyed and have nothing more to say . . . and, presumably, don’t want to hear what you have to say either.
Strangely, it has also found that ending sentences with exclamation marks is deemed to be more sincere and heartfelt!!
You constantly hear reports of major rifts and even violence resulting from a misunderstanding over a social media post or message. So why not stick to full stops, commas, etc, to make sure your message isn’t ambiguous and doesn’t cause problems for both sides?
Generation Z needs to accept the full stop for what it is.
Full stop.