So now the Zoomers consider periods passive-aggressive… When I first saw this story my thought was, “Kids these days…” Like us old folks aren’t being tormented enough over the pronoun business.

But I’ll be damned if it didn’t make a lot of sense. There IS a difference between “we need to talk soon” and “we need to talk soon.” with a period. The second one might imply you need to make a phone call.

I’m not sure NBC totally got it. The kids aren’t eliminating periods, they’re changing the rules. Because somebody needed to.

What they’re doing is metacommunication, something digital communication is notoriously bad at. Now I think of it, the digital age has changed the way I write.

Looking over my text messages with my wife, I barely used any periods. I also purposely misuse ellipses soften a sentence. When I write a blog, I’m not scared to mix formal and slang.

Because because OMG who tf am I trying to impress?

I’m a lot more of a stickler for punctuation than a Zoomer because I’m older but my text messaging and my social media comments have gotten less formal over the years. (I’ve been online for nearly 30 years now… That blows my mind.)

For me its more of a case of “Oh I forgot a period” but why bother this isn’t for business. But I think this idea has legs. Maybe this could be adapted to get more nuance into social media? Being able to indicate “I’m not trying to start a fight” would be pretty damn helpful.