A Matter Of Feeling

I've happened upon some interesting articles recently relating to the kind of punctuation that text-messaging involves for the younger generation. The idea that full-stops at the end of text messages seem rude is very difficult for me to grasp at the level of feeling since it just doesn't seem that way to me. Indeed, there is no way I could send a message without a concluding punctuation mark as it would feel so wrong, even though I'm perfectly aware it's not.

This is a powerful reminder that attempts to teach systems of punctuation as somehow logical are essentially misguided. It's salutary in this regard to look at the original punctuation in Shakespeare. So much of it is rhetorical in nature. I've had occasion to need to explain this to colleagues who genuinely think that WS somehow devised all the punctuation of his plays we see in modernised texts himself and it's obvious that, at some level, most choose not to believe me.