It's Just a Period! or..is it?
Did you know that using a period at the end of a sentence when communicating with someone through messages or text can be interpreted as being passive aggressive? This seems to be a new phenomenon that has surfaced over the last couple years. It seems like the addition or subtraction of a period could be misconstrued into something else. We are able to have instant communication with anyone we want now, but does text give us the same ability to really say what we want to say with the tone we want to say it?
For example, if you text your girlfriend that you are going to go out all night and she messages you “ok have fun.” do you take her for her word? Or not? Even a phone call would allow you to hear the tone of her voice which could help you tell if she was sincere about her "well wishes"…
Could the way we communicate with each other be evolving so quickly that we don’t even notice when it's happening?
It seems like there is new catchy online lingo everyday. I remember when “YOLO” was a thing. Now if you even mentioned the word “YOLO” people would look at you like you had been in a coma for the last 7 years and thought it was the year 2011. My mother recently said it to me, and I immediately busted out laughing.
I have been online since 1998, and even the acronym “lol” has changed meaning for me in that time. I remember that I would only use the term “lol” when something was actually funny in the year 1998-2000. It wasn’t like I used it all the time. Then I started using it all the time, even in conversations that weren’t exactly funny. For example “I am sick today lol” or “I’m on the way there lol” It’s like I used it at the end of a sentence as a period. Very strange.
Then I started to use it capitalized when something was actually funny, like LOL. I had to do this because I needed to start differentiating between the two since I over used the term so often. This seems more and more ridiculous as I break it down. I have been using "lol" so frequently over the last 20 years it has almost become part of who I am! A couple of times over the last 7 years or so I tried to stop using the term “lol” because when I read back on my messages I thought I sounded so immature.
Turns out, no matter how hard I tried to be more formal in messaging I couldn’t do it for more than a couple hours, and when I tried people thought something was wrong with me or I was upset. Here is an overview of how I use “lol”:
Lol-unless someone has died, I will use this after almost every sentence when talking with someone online or through text casually, does not mean you are funny or I am laughing about something
LOL- something is decently funny/ has made me smile. This has replaced the original “lol”
LOLOL- I am actually laughing out loud
Lol.- Not good, annoyed, I am possibly offended.
LOL.- kinda funny, might be offensive or the joke might be at someone else’s expense or politically incorrect.
I asked my father, who is 79 years old what “lol” stands for and he knew that it meant “laugh out loud” When I tried to explain to him that “lol” and “LOL” had different meanings to me he definitely gave me some strange looks, and I don’t blame him.
The reason why I decided to write this post today was because my sister and I just had this conversation via text:
I knew that we were going to hang out later today when she was done with work so I wanted to text her to see what time we would be meeting up. She seemed mad for some reason. It was the use of her punctuation that made me question if she was in a bad mood or angry with me. A simple period at the end of her texts changed the tone of the whole conversation.
It turns out, she was in a meeting at work and she wasn’t mad at all.
My sister works at a university in an office setting. She has to deal with students and other co-workers multiple times a day. She responds through email, on the phone and in person. Her job is very hands on with the students.
I on the other hand work for myself, by myself and the only interaction I get during working hours is talking to friends online or from my dogs. I work from home. My main income for over a decade has been selling designer clothing online. I admin a large group on Facebook where I have to deal with over 13,000 women buying and selling clothing. I also sell on Facebook and multiple websites. All of my communication comes in the form of messages and emails.
Do We Switch Conversational Personas Depending on Who We Are Talking To?
I think that we all talk to different people in different ways. I would not talk to my mother the same way that I talk to my friends. We have different “modes” that we go in when meeting new people, when we work in a professional setting, and when we are with close friends. We want to portray ourselves differently to each group. Our standing in each group depends on it.
Could the reason why I took Sarah’s messages as aggressive be because she accidentally talked to me like she would talk to her fellow co-workers and the students at the university where she works? Everything she says in correspondence with her co-workers and the students is semi-formal. I even do this when I work. When I am dealing with a customer service issue on eBay I am far more formal than I am when I deal with the admin duties or sales I have with the women in my Facebook group. I am not even sure why this is exactly. I think it’s because when I run my business on Facebook it is under my personal profile and I act according to how I would act to anyone who talks to me on my friends list, and on eBay it is far less personal, so I act more formal.
When we talk with someone in person we not only hear what the person is saying but we observe micro- expressions they are making, their tone and even their body language. We do this naturally, as a way to gage if we are danger or not. We are born with this ability. Since we do it so naturally, we try to apply the same tactics when reading into text communications too. We over think it! The problem with that is since we cannot see the person we are talking to, things get misunderstood.
It really is fascinating to think about how fast our whole world is changing. I think technology has sped up the evolution of language and how we all communicate with one another. Who knows, in a couple years we might be talking exclusively with gifs!
-Emily
What do you think? Have you ever misread into a simple text? I would love to hear about your thoughts in the comments below! Would you give me the honor of your upvote and or follow? I appreciate very single one!