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Comment by _Adam | Hacker News Reader

The article would be way more helpful with examples. What's an email that sounds "negative" but isn't?

Maybe it’s just me, but one email or IM response that really comes off that way is someone just replying with “Ok” and nothing else.

Or worse: “Ok.”

A period can completely change the meaning of a message.

One of the managers in my company has the bad habit of making speech to text replies to everything. The end result is:

“Okay, Kayodé.

Thanks.”

Those replies do not help my anxiety disorder. XD

Honest question. What offense do I cause by using punctuation? The lack of it bothers me - it seems sloppy.

I tend to stay away from one word replies, and if I need to confirm use 10-4 or wilco. Are either of those offensive?

It depends on the message. A longer form message with punctuation is fine. In short messages, the period is read as an aggressive sudden stop.

I read it completely differently. I see a sentence without punctuation as disinterested, as if they don't even bother to complete the sentence. Maybe acceptable in an IM, but not an email.

Thanks for the response. As SquareWheel also commented, the lack of punctuation seems disinterested or dismissive to me. I suppose my criticism of lack of punctuation is not different than others criticism of its inclusion.

"Ok" is ever more informal than "Ok." The decision whether or not to add the period is of course not always a matter of trying to sound more assertive, but in a three character message that potential cue will necessarily be "scaled up".

I can’t say anything useful about short-form email (I have never been comfortable with it, to be honest), but in IM the termination requirement feels to be already satisfied by the built-in separation between messages—in longer messages, I frequently end up using periods as statement separators rather than terminators. The only reason to use a final period, then, becomes to attach a feeling of additional abruptness or finality to the last sentence, which easily reads as (passive-)aggressive or dismissive. (I’m not saying “offensive” as that’s really more about the perception of the recipient, but these two are about the intent of the originator.)

The conventions for formal messaging and informal messaging are different, and punctuation is a contextual marker for formality. Receiving a reply to a physical letter that read, on company letterhead and with a physical signature

    Taxcoder, regarding your proposed changes,
    
    Ok.
    
    Sincerely, Jim Bossman

would be a bit alarming, because it's clear that the letter is a very formal one, but it deliberately omits everything you'd normally put in a letter. If you instead found your proposal mailed back to you with

    OK - Jim Bossman

written on the bottom in red pen, you wouldn't be at all worried, although depending on the context you might be insulted by the informality.

I think if a message without punctuation seems sloppy, the situation is formal enough to write a full sentence or paragraph. The combination of little to no feedback and attention to detail is what worries people.

How can a period completely change the meaning of a message? Especially a message that is just "Ok", with or without the period?

> A period can completely change the meaning of a message.

That's in your mind, unless you think your manager is one of the people who believes in Aggressive Periods. I've read the claim that periods are fraught with meaning many times, and yet I've never actually seen one used that way.

Unless, of course, you meant something more like "OK。。。".

Maybe you just haven’t realized it’s being used that way?

Examples:

“It’s fine!” (It is indeed fine.)

“It’s fine.” (It’s not at all fine.)

“K, thanks” (Got it, thanks)

“K. Thanks.” (Cool. Thanks for nothing.)

“Bye” (See you later)

“Bye.” (Fuck off)

No, I assure you that, if there are peer groups that use periods that way, I am not part of any of them.

And it's a mistake to assume that your manager must follow the same weird typographical conventions that you do. Odds are he's never heard of them.

It’s a pretty well documented/discussed aspect of text-based digital communication. Kind of like how text written in all caps is interpreted as “shouting”.

I’m honestly shocked there are HN users who are unaware of the tone implications.

Period. Full Stop. Point. Whatever It’s Called, It’s Going Out of Style (2016): https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/world/europe/period-full-...

The Period Is Pissed (2013): https://newrepublic.com/article/115726/period-our-simplest-p...

Stop. Using. Periods. Period. (2016): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/13/stop-...

The Secret Emotional Lives of 5 Punctuation Marks (2014): https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/59060/secret-emotional-l...

Why Does Using a Period in a Text Message Make You Sound Angry or Insincere? (2016): https://theconversation.com/why-does-using-a-period-in-a-tex...

Yes. A Study Shows that Ending Your Texts with a Period Makes You Sound Like an Asshole (2016): https://www.mic.com/articles/130042/ending-your-texts-with-a...

> I’m honestly shocked there are HN users who are unaware of the tone implications.

The tone implications are not an objective fact. They are a quirk of your social group.

As I wrote above, I'm "aware" of the implication in that I have seen it described many times. But it's not an implication that actually exists in any context I am part of.

By contrast, the belief that the ordinary smile emoji U+14642 constitutes an insult rather than a smile is a very real, and therefore more painful and annoying, part of my personal context.

Since my social group does not extend to the NY Times, Washington Post, or any of the authors of any of the links I posted it’s quite clearly not just a “quirk” of my social group. It’s part of a wider shift in how we use language to communicate online.

You can accept it or you can ignore it. Either way, the shift has already happened whether you’ve realized it or not.

My Grandma TYPES LIKE THIS ON FACEBOOK because she insists it shows her excitement. Silly, Grandma...

> You can accept it or you can ignore it. Either way, the shift has already happened whether you’ve realized it or not.

You viewing periods as threatening is not a shift that has happened to me. It's a shift that's happened to you. If I were to "accept it" as you suggest, the only thing that would happen would be that I started misinterpreting my friends and taking offense where none was offered. No part of that is a good idea.

You seem to have a lot of difficulty with the idea that different groups might not communicate in the same way. Do you really believe that everyone using 88 as a fun way to say "bye" is really signaling Nazi sympathies?

Sounds like you not having the shift described by the other guy is a quirk of your social group. Either way, you're both arguing which is more prevalent because it's implied that not 100% of everyone agrees with a social norm. We go with the majority.

I don't think "we go with the majority" just because you prefer the majority's preferences. There are many cultures on the internet and the planet, and they have their own local preferences. If anything, I think it would make sense to go by the Robustness Principle (be conservative in what you send, liberal with what you receive), though not everyone has to accept that, of course.

> My Grandma TYPES LIKE THIS ON FACEBOOK because she insists it shows her excitement

Yeah, and since she's your grandma you read her allcaps as excitement, don't you? mom glare

As a bridger, I think you all need to see the gradients that exist in language, and learn how to read, maybe write dialect

You're saying the tone implications are a quirk of our social groups. Because of how widespread it is now, I'd argue the lack of tone implications is a quirk of your social groups. You don't have to change how you communicate within your groups, but I hope you'll at least keep this is mind when communicating with people outside those groups.

> the belief that the ordinary smile emoji U+14642

For those who wonder and had to search, it's U+1F642.

https://emojipedia.org/slightly-smiling-face/

Seems to indicate it can be used in either sense... I think the sarcastic use is not universal.

Edit: just found out HN doesn't let me use emojis, probably a wise move.

Interesting. I notice this thread has gradually shifted from being about emails to being about text messaging, and not sure if people noticed, maybe that explains the apparent crossed wires?

It's news to me that full stops are considered rude, but then I don't have a mobile phone. I chat a lot on facebook though, and on MSN before that (with people in many countries, half of them in spanish). Always in...sentences, with full stops. Maybe text chat is a third thing, different to both texting on a phone and email? I don't know. I'd never have suspected a full stop could be rude until reading this thread though!

This has got to be colloquial. I've never heard of such a thing.

What country are you from? Canadian here.

For myself, I’m from Ohio and I’ve definitely seen language used this way. It is really dependent who you are talking to.

I hang out with a lot of people younger than me, who grew up outside the usual tech circles. They definitely text this way and it’s mostly how I text. People on Hacker News are not the type of people I see talking like this.

> Or worse: “Ok.” A period can completely change the meaning of a message.

I must have offended legions of people.

I suppose "Ack" (short for Acknowledged) is also offensive?

not offensive but it can be read as dismissive. sounds good to me or will do seem better, but tbh chat generally sucks and we all just have to learn to not read too much into it.

My last manager would frequently message me "Ack!" after I would bring up some work concern, and until just now I thought he was making the exasperated sound from the Cathy comic strip.

Or the sound the Martians from Mars Attacks made.

by abbreviating, it seems like you value your own time higher than the other person, like their message is not worth writing a whole word in response. At least, that's how I might feel about it. That and it feels a bit like that sketch in The Office where Kevin drops all his interstitial words for "efficiency" and ends up sounding brain damaged.

Obviously that's not the intent, but as per the article, work-related IMs and emails can heighten negative perception and such.

ACK (06) is ASCII for Acknowledge.

"In data networking, telecommunications, and computer buses, an acknowledgment (ACK) is a signal that is passed between communicating processes, computers, or devices to signify acknowledgment, or receipt of message, as part of a communications protocol."

yeah I know, it's also the first packet in a TCP handshake. Being a nerdy reference may help in some cases, but not others.

first response packet*

How does a period change the meaning?

Think. About. It.

Entirely different than just "OK" vs "OK.".

No, from my experience, many people consider short reply to a long message a sort of dismissal of their effort, and if it uses slang it seems doubly offensive.

Right. My sense is it’s a dismissive and/or low effort response, especially to any sort of substantive message. But I’m also an anxious person so I’m likely reading into it too much.

My typical reply if I want to quickly acknowledge something is, “Got it. Thank you!”

“Ok” to me is just acknowledgement of the message. It should not be seen as negative, just neutral.

Whether or not it should be seen as neutral, it usually isn’t: https://www.insidehook.com/article/advice/the-difference-bet...

I think it all depends on how that person usually responds, both in-person, and in written communication. If they are usually chatty and like to over-explain, and sprinkle emojis everywhere, and then, to this one particular message, they respond with just "ok.", then there could be something to it.

However, if they are simply terse and serious most of the time anyway, then they are just being themselves. I would be nice if they were chattier, but it's just their usual personality.

The apple harassment and discrimination claims that related to a manager providing feedback that they thought a presentation was better when it didn't sound like every sentence was a question? Does someone have a link to that. It was pretty recent I think.

The employee was female and was very offended.

The manager may have intended to be helpful.

It looks like this is called tone policing so maybe it is offensive feedback in fact:

https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1422380335703101443

Don't have a link to the Apple case but your description sounds like this [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal

The article has examples. It's not about emails "sounding" one way but "actually" not being that way, it's about how different people perceive the same email (the recipient versus outside parties).

> We asked them questions about the email and then asked objective observers to read the same messages. We found people who had received the emails directly rated the messages far more negatively than did the observers.

> Many were outwardly civil and even polite: “We acknowledge that our request has a very short timeline and certainly appreciate that you are very busy.” Or, “Just wondering why no update has been received. No news is good news hopefully!”

> Hello _Adam,

> The x project - I think it needs y and z aspects. Let's meet Monday and discuss.

> Boss

Since context is important, let's say this is the message you received after a largely successful demonstration of something you've been working on.

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