{"id":96293,"date":"2025-06-28T04:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=96293"},"modified":"2025-06-27T16:23:38","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T20:23:38","slug":"punctuation-microaggression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/06\/28\/punctuation-microaggression\/","title":{"rendered":"Punctuation microaggression"},"content":{"rendered":"

We appear to have an entire generation — Gen Z — suffering undue trauma from, checks notes, aggressive and distressing punctuation marks<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“American typewriter keyboard layout” by \u041b\u044e\u0431\u043e\u0441\u043b\u043e\u0432 \u0415\u0437\u044b\u043a\u0438\u043d<\/a> is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 <\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

What is more delicious than casting sweeping judgements over entire generations? Contrary to prevailing wisdom, studying and mocking the mores and manners of Generation Z is not only morally just but entirely natural. Not to mention good fun.<\/p>\n

At the end of this paragraph, re-read this string of sentences. Study the punctuation. You’ll notice that each sentence ends with a satisfying symbol. What Americans call a period and what Britishers call a full stop signifies the end of the sentence \u2014 that the sentence contains a complete thought. How lovely.<\/p>\n

\n

That unassuming little dot was good enough for Shakespeare, Hemingway, Ibsen, Miller \u2014 every writer who mastered the well-mannered violence of the English Language. They understood, too, the writerly compulsion to kneel before that impossible mistress. Submission sets the writer free.<\/p>\n

Submission, however, is not in vogue. Submission implies hierarchy, which implies standards \u2014 forbidden notions to anyone under 45.<\/p>\n

Generation Z. The Zoomers. Those with the misfortune to have spawned here on Earth between 1997 and 2012. This swarm of digital natives has never known a world without the internet. Or, it appears, one with grammatical standards.<\/p>\n

According to linguists, Zoomers view the full stop as Bill Clinton views a well-adjusted woman: with intrinsic horror. For Zoomers, the full stop is the mark of unbridled aggression. Zoomers refuse full stops \u2014 period.<\/p>\n

In The Telegraph<\/em>, one-linguist-cum-exorcist said that Zoomers find the full stop deeply troubling. That little dot before these seven words provokes a generational panic attack: “Full stops signify an angry or abrupt tone of voice”.<\/p>\n

Another expert chimed in. Dr Lauren Fonteyn tweeted, “If you send a text message without a full stop, it’s already obvious that you’ve concluded the message. So, if you add that additional marker for completion, they will read something into it, and it tends to be a falling intonation or negative tone.”<\/p>\n

To renew my sense of horror, I probed further. In a 2015 study at New York’s Binghamton University, undergraduates perceived text messages ending with a full stop as “less sincere” than the same message without one.<\/p>\n

Language, like the fish, rots from the head. Researchers also found that exclamation marks, those hyperactive symbols of faux cheer, achieved the opposite of full stops. Those employing an exclamation mark appeared “more sincere and engaged”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We appear to have an entire generation — Gen Z — suffering undue trauma from, checks notes, aggressive and distressing punctuation marks: What is more delicious than casting sweeping judgements over entire generations? Contrary to prevailing wisdom, studying and mocking the mores and manners of Generation Z is not only morally just but entirely natural. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,15],"tags":[52,1106,400,238,139,547,134],"class_list":["post-96293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-technology","tag-absurd","tag-genz","tag-language","tag-offensensitivity","tag-psychology","tag-smartphones","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-p37","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96295,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96293\/revisions\/96295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}