Apparently periods are bad now.
My partner and I texted for several weeks before officially dating or even hanging out in person. It was during the pandemic, so this was not unusual. Also, she did not think I was interested at first, because I put periods at the end of my sentences.
To me and anybody else who grew up under the widespread assumption that periods were a normal and correct way to conclude a thought, this was startling news. But long before I learned about it, younger people had decided periods were old-fashioned, aloof and even rude.
You may, as a newspaper reader, be as surprised by this information as I was. I have used several periods in this column already and, fair warning, will use many more.
They will probably never disappear from media, legal writing, book publishing or academia. When students have ChatGPT write essays for them, presumably the bot is kind enough to add periods and other conventional punctuation, lest a teacher or professor think they were cutting corners.
But periods in less formal communication modes, such as texts, emails and social media posts are, as Nitsuh Abebe explained in a recent New York Times Magazine piece, “Too brusque. Too cold. Too testy.” By the early 2010s, “a new tonal consensus really had emerged: The period seemed pointed, stern, passive-aggressive.”
Thus a complicated system of period substitutes has emerged to soften the messaging, each introducing a different kind of confusion.
For instance, everyone with a laptop job now wrestles with how many exclamation points to put in a work email whose topic does not justify the enthusiasm such a punctuation mark would ordinarily convey. “Impressive slide deck!” “Here are my monthly expenses!” “Your bereavement leave is approved!” And so on.
We have texted and commented our way into a conundrum for which there is no ideal solution. Periods make you appear dead inside. (“Great column this week.”) Excessive exclamation points seem batty. (“Great column this week!!!!!”) Another popular alternative, the ellipsis, signifies detachment but also feels ominous. (“Great column this week…”)
Some prefer a question mark, which indicates a lack of commitment or certainty. (“Great column this week?”) A text with a closing “haha”/“lol” or laugh/cry emoji — which is my parents’ favorite way to deliver important health information — introduces contextual uncertainty. (“Great column this week, haha”)
The most elegant solution, if you want to call it that, is to drop the end-of-sentence punctuation altogether — “Great column this week” — and replace it with an unspoken “meh,” using periods as seasoning and turning all written communication into the kind of free-verse poetry that drove me nuts in college.
The death of the period in texting has had an ironic effect. My sources within Gen Z have informed me that “period!” is now a common spoken declaration.
Young people say it all the time, usually to simulate a mic-drop or to emphasize a point somebody else makes, like how everyone on 1990s sitcoms would say “word!” when they agreed with something.
Even if I wanted to, I’m not sure there is a way to complain about any of this without turning into the proverbial old man shaking his fist at a cloud, yelling pointlessly about the erosion of standards that are supposed to hold language and, by extension, society, together.
Grammar and usage wars are always a fruitful subject for column writers and internet pontificators, because change is constant, and if you squint your eyes just right, you can interpret discourse about commas, adverbs, apostrophes, etc., as proxies for wider cultural skirmishes and the endless tension between populism and authority, progress and tradition.
It’s also, I realize, a convenient way to redirect one’s attention from the horror show that now constitutes a routine news day in America.
So, if during this endless winter, I seem to be fixating on literally the smallest available distraction — the humble period — as a coping mechanism, well, that is precisely what is happening. Exclamation point.