You should not end your dotted text messages, study alert

When sending a text message or during a chat via Facebook or WhatsApp, for example, do you usually end your sentences with a full stop? In that case, it might be a good idea for you to start ignoring the urge to punctuate what you type when using these services - and deliberately disobeying grammar.

According to Rachel Feltman of The Washington Post, a survey conducted by scientists at Binghamton University in New York found that people who end their sentences with dots - when chatting with friends via computer or mobile phone - are perceived. less friendly, and because of that, the content of text messages is considered less sincere.

Dialogues

As the researchers explained, text messaging is the most common means of network communication, and the speed with which it is exchanged simulates face-to-face conversations. Thus, the research emerged from the curiosity of finding out if the end point was capable of conveying aspects present in verbal conversations, such as the tone - friendly, sad, aggressive etc. - facial expressions, gestures and speech rate, for example.

To conduct the experiments, the scientists recruited 126 college students and showed them a series of "conversations" in the form of handwritten dialogues and text messages.

The content of the test material consisted of invitations followed by responses - and the researchers noted that when these answers were completed with a dot, they were perceived as less sincere by the participants. But most curious is that this effect was not recorded in handwritten notes, but only in text messages.

Score.

According to the researchers, it is as if the full stop has come to life of its own in text messaging - and is no longer performing its grammatical function. As they said, as this kind of communication is devoid of the social and emotional information that face-to-face dialogues convey, people now use emoticons, letter sequences that represent sounds and actions - such as “rsrs” and “kkk” - and signals to supply that need.

In the case of the poor thing, in the words of the researchers, "it has turned into an act of psychological warfare against your friends." A later study by the same group of scientists pointed out that sentences ending with exclamation marks appear to make the messages more sincere. So now you know how to balance the tone of your conversations, don't you?

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