The End of the Full Stop?

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Yes, and I suppose I could tell myself that to put a full stop is a waste of time. Right, I mean, wasting my time probably texting, but we'll leave that to one side. But I could say the full stop is redundant because it's the end of the line. So I don't need to do it. And I've saved myself one millionth of a second. Yes. Well, let's widen it out a bit. The discussion about the death of full stops has been going on for a bit, but it fired up again in 2020 in particular when writer Rianne Kosslett tweeted in an hour deleted tweet, which of course is another thing we can do. We can delete our tweets. Older people, she said, do you realise that ending a sentence with a full stop comes across as sort of abrupt and unfriendly to younger people in an email or chat genuinely curious end. Now a lot of people got riled about this, but a lot of people agreed, including crime novelist Sophie Hannah who responded, quote, just asked 16 year old son, apparently this is true. If he got a message with full stops at the end of sentences, he had think the sender was his quote now, weird, mean, or too blunt end of quotes. Do you think that's what Gen Z think when they read a full stop? So I think we need to think about the context of digital communication. So we're getting messages continuously throughout the day or when you're speaking to somebody you'll get these short messages. And I think the rude or abrupt interpretation comes from where you might end one sentence with this. So you can imagine a conversation where someone says, you know, is that okay with you? And they send a message that says fine and end that with full stop. And that does look like the individual perhaps has taken offense to what has been said. And it's all to do with leaving what we linguists would call the conversational floor being able to floor F L L O R. Oh, sorry. That's my L vocalization. Yeah. That's fine. Just clarifying. Yeah. So the conversation, oh, I like this idea. So that again, the conversational floor. So what's up if we think about it is always open. People assume that somebody is always open to talk, whereas obviously in face to face interaction where we can talk and how we can talk is bounded by being somewhere at a certain place, whereas on WhatsApp, you're consistently available. But essentially ending a conversation with a full stop signals to the other person perhaps that you've had enough of that conversation that you've closed the conversational floor. And so I think what we have here, we often think about this as kind of a generational difference. I think it's actually more just a difference in style. And some people will have taken conventions from perhaps older written genres like letter writing where you would communicate your idea in one chunk of text and then finally end it with a full stop, whereas perhaps young people might have been more used to this kind of turn taking where you send a message, the individual responds, and then if you on your final message end it with a full stop, it perhaps suggests to the individual that you're done with the conversation. Yeah. So I can imagine it's a generational thing though, where someone of my age might put the full stop in with almost without thinking just because we think we see a sentence. Yeah. And we just think it's unfinished if it hasn't got a full stop. It's a little kind of we do that. We have no idea that our teenage offspring at the other end of the line are going, oh, he's a bit off. Yes. And of course some people also think that this business of living off full stops and commas is ignorant or lazy. But of course you're saying more that it has its own, I won't say secret, but it's got its own undertones of meaning. Exactly. Because if you think about it, the spelling system and grammar is so prescribed, right, we are aware of the grammatical rules of English, which says that a declarative phrase should end in a full stop that if people are not using a full stop, it suggests that they're doing something intentionally creative or perhaps trying to communicate a meaning that's perhaps more complex and simply being lazy. It's a positive statement about Asmrus. Yes. I'm writing to you, Christian. I'm saying, see you at the BBC later. I won't do a full stop. Right. We end and you think that's nice and informal. Exactly that. Yeah. And I think that's for a lot of young people, we see social media as informal. Right. That is where we communicate with our friends. That's where we communicate with our peers. And to create that informality, I think we've kind of stripped away some of perhaps the conventions of other forms of written communication that might seem a higher register or more formal register. And so even if we spell things in a non-standard way, it's often to create intimacy. And so it's ours. It belongs to us. It's our communication. Yes. So look, maybe the full stop is dying out to me in this informal communication we're talking about. But then so is the capital letter, isn't it? The start of sentence, isn't it? If you have an individual who consistently writes in lower case, then I would say that there is some intentionality there. There's something they're trying to communicate by using this linguistic style because it's marked. Right. We know in English that we start a sentence with capital letter, prop noun and so on. And so if someone is intentionally not using that, they're trying to convey something at a higher level, I believe. And is it the end of the world? No, no. My view as a linguist is, you know, variation is inherent in language. And as long as we can understand what the individual is trying to communicate, then really there's nothing, there's no problem. So I mean, especially given the context of this, right? So text messaging, informal context between young people and their mates, emails, they probably exhibit some style shifting. So if you look at a young person's text, they are not going to take that style and apply it to the context of any formal email to say, for instance, a potential employer. So you're saying generally that this, let's call it informal way of writing is marking, well, I would say a generation, but as I do it as well, and I'm not part of that generation, it's marking who we want to be and how we want to talk to each other. Is it friendliness? Is that what it is? Yes, I think that a lot of what we do in digital communication is trying to convey to someone that this is a friendly conversation. So we use innovative ways of interacting, spelling, punctuation devices to essentially maintain intimacy or friendliness in this informal chat. Yes, a lot of zeds I use for the S sound, they creep in, you know, my late son always called him Ed's with a zed, you know, so there's lots of zeds seem to come in, right? Even lulls get up with a zed. So and that's that's saying this is what we do, isn't it? Yeah, we're chumps, we're, yeah. And I think a lot of this too kind of relates to the fact that digital communication is a very space where we can't communicate things that we can otherwise use body language to do, right? So tone, intonation, we can't do that in text, so then we use linguistic devices like if we spell the word cool, we might insert a few more O's to essentially mimic the vowel lengthening that we might have in spoken language. So people are quite creative in getting around these barriers, otherwise to digital communication where you can't use body language, you can't use tone. Now let's get on to exclamation marks. Yep, I've sometimes put five exclamation marks in a text, six. Yeah, what am I doing? Why am I bothering? Why am I doing that? Well, I think it's actually just related to what I said about the lack of paralinguistic features in text. So what we're trying to do is use written language to express our feelings, our thoughts, emotions. And if you look at the way that kind of standard text is formulated, it can be perceived by people as quite formal or not expressive. And so using exclamation marks is essentially a way of you communicating one to the individual that this is an informal style or that you might be friendly, you might be expressive. I, too, use a lot of exclamation marks. It's often a stereotype of gay men as more general stereotype of gay men being expressive. And this is something that I am always aware of in my emails. It's either an exclamation mark or a Smiley Moji to convey this. And you could argue we're in an era of hyperbole excitement of the moment, you know, so that even, you know, obviously a big thing might happen. So I'm a new grandfather. Lots of exclamation marks were whizzing to and fro at the event, of course. But also it could be, you know, and it was great that the pub today wasn't it. Yeah. And it might be a question mark there or it might be like eight exclamation marks. Then we have a great time. But I mean, I mean, just talking about it does seem quite absurd really. - Yeah, but I think it's interesting 'cause they convey subtle pragmatics and meaning differences. - What do you mean by pragmatics? - So, pragmatics is essentially in third meaning. So what do we get out of what someone says? So we can say something like it's hot in here, but that really means it's truly hot. It often means something like can someone open the window? So in pragmatics, you're inferring meaning, as opposed to what's actually said in the context. So I mean, given what we've been speaking about here, often we're doing this kind of subtle conveying of meaning through quite fine grain differences in how we construct the text. So it might be, for instance, saying something like, what a great day for stop is significantly less expressive than what a great day in multiple exclamation marks where someone has clearly had a very, very nice time at whatever they did in that day. - Yes. I'm remembering one communication I have with my stepdaughter the other day, which was, I said that I saw her out of the bus window in place in North London, you see? And exclamation mark, or several, she then replied, "Bit difficult, I'm in Indonesia." (laughing) And then all I had to do in reply, of course, was wasn't even to make a comment, was just throw down some more exclamation marks without even saying, "Oh wow, yes, oh, interesting, "oh, you're having a nice time." Just slapped in some exclamation marks. So it is very strange, but it all makes total sense when you're doing it. - Exactly, that's what we've learned, the rules, the unwritten rules of digital communication. So nobody explains this to us. - There wasn't a teacher telling me to do that. - Yeah, we all get it. - And look, embarrassed moment coming up now, I can hear Mr. Brown and Mrs. Tumble over my shoulder saying, "Where's the question mark, Michael?" I don't even bother with question marks now, because I think the grammar will say, if I say, "Are you going to the game tonight?" - Right, exactly. - I won't even bother with the question mark. - Exactly. - Yeah. - I'm gonna say it, that is actually lazy. Well, Mr. Brown and Mrs. Tumble are telling me off, Christian. (laughing) - Yeah, I mean, so the syntax already marks something as a question, right? So a WH question is formed by a WH word. So who went to the party last night? And do you need the question mark there? Will you already know it's a question? Because the who cues an interrogative syntax structure? - And also the inversion, "Are you not you are?" - Right, exactly. - But I can't also say, "You going," I don't even know, right? "You are right." - Yes, that's true. - I can hear listeners now just horrified that Rosen does this, but never mind. "You going to the game?" - Yeah. - "Question mark." So this time I put the question mark in in order to show that I've turned that statement, that declarative statement into a question, with the question mark, you going to the game tonight? Question. - Right, exactly. - So I use it in the opposite way. - Yeah, so there, the question mark, as a punctuation feature, is actually quite helpful in marking some, the syntax of that clause as an interrogative, as a question. So there it actually does have quite a useful function in distinguishing between a question and a statement. - Yes, it imitates the internet. You go into the game tonight. - Right. - And of course, there is a lot more upspeak in modern speech anyway. - Yeah. - I mean, people even use it when they're being declarative and asking a question. - Yeah. - I'm going to the game tonight. - Exactly. (laughing) - Yes. Yes, and then people have a lot of fun with this, and some people get very irritated by it, which is the question mark, exclamation mark, or round the other way, as a question mark. - In terabang. - Is that the formal name for it? - I think it's the name that most people were familiar with in terabang. - In terabang. - Do you use them? - I do, yeah, surprise shock, I think is how you would kind of summarize what its function is. - But can it, it can also be for irony, can't it? If you want to indicate that a statement is a bit ironic, it is one of the ways that you can do it in social media. - Sure. - Just to make absolutely clear, when you said, that was big, wasn't it? - Yeah. - It was sarcasm of the sort. - Sure. - That was really big, wasn't it? When really you mean it was small, then the question mark, exclamation mark, would be quite handy. - Yeah, I think it's again, back to a lack of parallel linguistic features, the people have even used the hashtag to kind of indicate how the meaning should be interpreted. So hashtag irony or hashtag sarcasm, you see in messages quite frequently. - Or a hem, I think. - A hem? - Yep, yeah. - A hem. Yeah, now one that I really haven't kept up with is this business of alternating lower case with uppercase, using capital letters in the middle of words. Can you fill me in on that? - Yeah, so a lot of people were associated this with a particular internet meme. It's called the SpongeBob meme. And there is a image of SpongeBob who kind of looks a bit discombobulated. And it's essentially intended to mimic a vocal parody. So if you're parodying someone else, you might use this voice that is kind of alternating intonation, so he's a bit like that. And it's intentionally designed to mimic this parodic voice. - And is it anybody's, oh, I'm really learning something here. This is lovely. So let's say I was imitating a politician. - Yeah. - It doesn't matter that they say the prime minister. - Sure. - In any prime minister of the past. And if I was imitating his or her voice. - Yeah. - Right. And I use this alternate lower case uppercase. - Yes. - I wouldn't have to put quotes around it and say, that was Margaret Thatcher or something. I could just, that would do it. - Yes, because people online often recognize this as associated with this particular meme category. So it kind of circulates as something that people recognize, even if it's not attached to that meme. - Oh, that's all very subtle. I gotta catch up with that one. - And then when I'm asking you questions about change across the population. - Yeah. - Sorry, cheeky question. How do you know? - Yeah. - Who are you spying on? - Yeah, so I do a lot of work on TikTok. I extract comments from that social media platform. So that is primarily video based, but there's still a comment section. And so TikTok is often associated with a particular generation. It's frequently used by Gen Z. And so by looking at the ways in which they're constructing their messages or their comments on TikTok, we can kind of get a sense of what is perhaps conventional for these young people. I also do a lot of work where I work with the young people themselves and ask them why they do X or why they spell this in this way. And so we use essentially natural language data to see these patterns, to work out why people do what they do. And I mean, the conclusion is they do it for a good reason. - Yeah. - So with everything we talked about today, I don't really feel like doing a bit of predicting, but let's say just gone, you give it a try. 20 years from now, the apostrophe, still here or gone? - I think it's still gonna be here. So I think teachers, grammarians, gatekeepers of linguistic conventions are still going to instill this in generations. - Right. And the full stop rule? - I think that will still be here. - Capital letters? - Yes, still here. - Right. Well, in 20 years time people were here this recording. So we're nearing the end of the program now. So one more thought about full stops. What do Americans call a full stop a period? - Yeah. So originally we had periodos from Greek, which was essentially the high marker for indicating a pause. And that's essentially kind of taken on a different meaning now in the context of what we consider now to be the full stop in British English. Americans simply use a more archaic form of that word. - And they use it as an expressive form, don't they? - Yes. - That's it, period. - Yeah, which is very good. - Yeah, we have a similar thing right in British English where we say that's the end of it full stop. - Oh, yes. - Well, maybe I'll do that at the end of the program. - Yeah. - Now, before we leave you, one more thing to tell you, listeners, the Open University has produced a quiz exploring why languages have idioms such as let the cat out of the bag and, well, word of mouth. And why they're key to how we communicate. Well, if you're keen to do it, visit the BBC Radio 4 Word of mouth page and follow the links to the Open University. In the meantime, big thanks to my guest today, Christian Elbrich. - Thank you very much. - And I vow, never again, to use a full stop when texting my kids. Period.