Do You Agree or Disagree? Punctuation is Good.
Summary
A straphanger defends punctuation with surprising passion, insisting it's "necessary and good, even in text messages." Especially in text messages. Kareem pushes back on the idea that ending a text with a period sounds aggressive or mad, but his conversation partner won't budge. She's all lowercase gang, except for names, and speaks in fully proper sentences to prove her point. The debate gets absurd fast when Kareem starts narrating his own punctuation out loud: "Yes, period. Hey, comma. What's up, question mark." It's a fight about grammar that's really about how we've invented completely arbitrary rules for digital communication. Thanks, period.
Full Transcript
So what's your take? Punctuation is good. Punctuation is good. It's necessary and it's good, even in text messages. Especially in text messages. How will people know that a sentence has ended? That's awful.
It's not. So how would you text someone? "Hello." You do "hello period." Absolutely. That's offensive.
Why is it offensive? Why does punctuation offend you? It's scary if you say "thanks period" or "hello period" or "goodbye period." I think that you're mad at me. Or maybe I just like grammar. I don't know.
If I agree with this, I mean, honestly, like, I just don't understand why a period is... I'm all lowercase gang.
That's so annoying. Except for names.
That's so annoying. So do you speak in just fully proper sentences? Yes, always. I want to show the people an example verbally.
Yes. Okay, period. Hey, comma. What's up, question mark. It makes people think I'm angry. It's not a normal social norm.
I mean, what is a social norm? It's a very arbitrary social norm. Is all lower case what year were you born in?
That's not for you. That's for children.