Here's Why Boomers Keep Using Ellipses In Text (And Why It Makes You Panic)

A message reading Happy Birthday... Enjoy Yourself...Did you know that using two spaces after a full stop in typing can reveal your age? It’s a holdover from the mechanical issues presented by typewriters – even style guide APA, a “staunch defender” of double spaces, decided to ditch the grammar quirk in 2019.For me, though, the biggest tell that I’m texting someone over about 60 is their use of ellipsis. Specifically, the use of ”...” instead of a comma or full stop.“Hope you’re well...” is a standard example from my own phone. I find it ominous and vaguely threatening; one Redditor got so frustrated by the quirk they asked whether there was “something in education in the ’70s and ’80s that had led to 45+ year olds in the UK” to use ellipsis instead of full stops or commas in texts. I’d put the trend a bit older on average (Boomers to the poster’s Gen X+), but I’m no expert. So, I reached out to people who were and asked why certain generations might use ”...” so often, as well as why it makes me panic.There’s no firm data, but linguists still have thoughtsExpert after expert told me there was no firm data on this, meaning it could easily be baloney. Real proof of the trend would require broad, empirical research, which we just don’t have yet. Still, some linguists were willing to offer their thoughts in the meantime. Dr Christian Ilbury, a Lecturer in Sociolinguistics at The University of Edinburgh, says: “My feeling is that some of the older generation use … to separate a thought or a topic in text, e.g., ‘Just went to the docks… it was such a lovely day… see you soon x.’”But he doesn’t think it’s limited to digital text alone.“I have a few letters from a much older relative who used to write to me a lot and she often used the ellipsis in a similar way,” he shares. “So I’d assume that these people are just applying the same written conventions they learnt in other genres of writing, eg, letters, to digital communication.” The linguist pointed to a paper about Swiss postcards, which showed that ”...” is common in that form of text.“It does seem to me to be an older written convention that hasn’t filtered down into younger people’s uses of digital communication.” Meanwhile, Dr Sali Tagliamonte, a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Language Variation and Change, shares: “Given what I know about language use in social media, I expect that different generations would have their own unique style, perhaps harkening back to their informal written language use in other registers.“Apparently, older users just don’t have the same ‘rules’ of usage that younger generations have. That would not surprise me at all... I don’t see it at all among my five children.” So why do I find ”...” in a text so ominous?I always feel a little spooked when I read a text like “stay out of trouble...”, as if the texter knows something I don’t. Dr Ilbury tells me I’m not alone. “I get the sense that it is ominous too,” he said. “The ellipsis, as I am sure you know, is primarily a literary device that is intended to cause suspense or used to signal that something is intentionally left out,” he adds.“So if it is being used in digital communication, for most people, there’s a question as to why suspense is being created or why something is being left out.” It doesn’t help that we can’t share things like facial expressions or tone over text.So, while ”...” might look like a harmless letter-writing style older texters, “younger people who have likely never learnt this convention default to the ominous interpretation, i.e., there’s something [bad] that I’m intentionally leaving out.” Again, we don’t have firm data yet on the trend. And no matter why they do it, I say to the dot dot dot generation: don’t worry about what we think... Enjoy... xRelated...'Nothing Says Over 50' Like Following This 1 Grammar Rule, Experts SayWhat You Call This Time May Reveal Your Age, Language Expert SaysI’m A Teacher – Not Saying This 1 Word Is Making Kids ‘Unteachable’

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