This generational messaging habit may be worse than capitalization.
When writing a large paragraph, older adults may use what’s been called “Boomer ellipses”—multiple dots on a line, also called suspension dots—to separate ideas, inadvertently making messages more ominous or anxious. – encouraging and irritating General Z.
“What exactly is going on with boomers and ellipses?” One Redditor asked earlier this year, saying their mom’s texting drives them “up a wall.”
“At worst it comes off as passive-aggressive, at best crazy.”
The user gave an example, explaining that their “Boomer neighbor” writes things like “Thank you…”
“Like what else should be said or implied? Why not ‘Thank you!’ ‘Thank you.’ or ‘Thanks :),’” said the angry Redditor.
Commenters on the forum offered possible reasons for the “chronic” ellipses issue, such as “bad education” or a way to imply “gaps between thoughts”.
But Adam Aleksic, also known as the “etymology fool,” found that it’s really because Boomers “grew up following different rules for informal communication.”
“Nowadays, if you want to share an idea, you just press enter and start a new line with a new thought,” he said in a TikTok video.
“But it made less sense to do that to write postcards or letters where you needed to save space, so people at the time learned to separate thoughts using ellipses.”
Because punctuation now means something more than its intended use, he continued, it’s perceived as “reluctance, annoyance, or passive aggressiveness,” since that’s how Zoomers and Millennials typically use ellipses.
Despite the confusion, Gen Xers and Boomers aren’t ready to part with the three-point threat.
“I will probably use ellipses until the day I die.” It’s going to be on my tombstone, it’s going to be in my obituary,” a Gen X creator Jess said in an online video, arguing that her generation, on the other hand, is still trying to learn the acronyms of Gen Z and jargon.
TikTokkers compared ellipses to a “pregnant pause” or as a way to signal “etc”, arguing that they “love ellipses” and “can’t help” but use it.
“You need to pry the ellipse off my cold dead hands,” one viewer commented.
“Gen X here and I will never let him go,” agreed another.
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Image Source : nypost.com