It might be grammatically correct to end a sentence with a period, but it’s not a good idea to use them in a text. That’s according to a new study, which found that people don’t think texts that end in periods are sincere.
The study by researchers at Binghamton University showed that 126 undergraduates did not think a text was sincere if it ended with a period. They thought no-period texts were much nicer. However, when the texts were presented as handwritten notes, they appeared more sincere with periods.
According to the Washington Post, researchers found that texting is more of a replication of verbal conversations that written correspondence.
“Text messaging is one of the most frequently used computer-mediated communication (CMC) methods. The rapid pace of texting mimics face-to-face communication, leading to the question of whether the critical non-verbal aspects of conversation, such as tone, are expressed in CMC,” the study reads.
To make things more confusing, follow-up research showed that if you use an exclamation point at the end of a sentence, it makes a message more sincere.
“Texting is lacking many of the social cues used in actual face-to-face conversations. When speaking, people easily convey social and emotional information with eye gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses, and so on,” Celia Klin, associate professor of psychology at Binghamton, said in a statement. “People obviously can't use these mechanisms when they are texting. Thus, it makes sense that texters rely on what they have available to them -- emoticons, deliberate misspellings that mimic speech sounds and, according to our data, punctuation.”
Clearly, not using a period is another way for us to change the tone of our text messages. Texting might actually be the one form of communication where periods aren’t that important. But you still want to have your commas in the right place.