Punctuated Texts May Seem Less Sincere

In some very recent follow-up work, Klin’s team found that a text response with an exclamation mark is interpreted as more, rather than less, sincere.

What’s interesting here – other than that anyone would seek to study this phenomenon – is that the same messages didn’t have these undertones in handwritten communications, suggesting the digital messages is adopting its own set of grammatical rules and subtexts.

The freaky conclusion was reached after a team at Binghamton University in NY recruited 126 volunteers and monitored a series of exchanges.

Klin says the results indicate that punctuation ultimately influences how texts are perceived.

Punctuation pedants might think they’re doing the right thing by using a full stop during text messages, it turns out it’s actually one of the biggest technological faux pas one can make, according to new research. “Wanna come?” followed by a single word response such as “Okay”, “Sure”, “Yeah” or “Yup”.

Bad news for the grammar purists among us; ending messages with a full stop is “rude”. “When speaking, people easily convey social and emotional information with eye gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses, and so on”, explains lead researcher Celia Klin, associate professor of Psychology at Binghamton University’s Harpur College.

Interestingly, when participants read the same exchanges that were handwritten, no such differences were found. When the reply ended with a period, they were perceived as being less honest than the ones which didn’t contain a period. These mechanisms aren’t available for people who are texting, so texters are aided by emoticons and the option to deliberately misspell words to mimic sound and punctuation.

‘Punctuation is used and understood by texters to convey emotions and other social and pragmatic information’.

The study, ‘Texting insincerely: the role of the period in text messaging, ‘ was published November 22, 2015 in Computers in Human Behavior.