In news that should continue to make anyone with even a passing familiarity with Mssrs. Strunk and White positively dyspeptic from frustration, those sick bastards collectively known as “science” have determined to strip the English language of what few bulwarks remain against the encroaching darkness of linguistic flim-flammery. The Washington Post reports that researchers led by Binghamton University’s Celia Klin have announced that ending texts with a period—the alpha and omega of punctuation—makes those messages come across as less sincere. These findings were probably passed around the research team via the text “dogg u c this shit grammar can eet 4 dongs lol,” as is now linguistically acceptable.
In order to contribute to the downfall of communication, the test studied whether text messages and handwritten notes were perceived as less sincere when the sentences contained within them were followed by a period. And, in positively shocking news for a study that utilized 126 undergraduate students as its subjects, Klin and her fellow researchers found that when the period was present in text messages, respondents rated the messages as less sincere. (The handwritten notes suffered no such loss of perceived sincerity, possibly because none of the subjects had ever seen a handwritten note before.)
“Texting is lacking many of the social cues used in actual face-to-face conversations,“ Klin says in a statement, having to point out that things like tone of voice are used as interpretive cues in face-to-face discussion, because that’s where we’re at now. “People obviously can’t use these mechanisms when they are texting. Thus, it makes sense that texters rely on what they have available to them—emoticons, deliberate misspellings that mimic speech sounds and, according to our data, punctuation.” Those of you who wasted your time trying to learn things in your English classes can now stare out the window, wondering why you even bothered, while America’s youth can rejoice, secure in the knowledge they have pulled down one more barrier separating them from the spambots. Look for our follow-up story, “emily whistled sexily in trees under Scotland 100 percent guaranteed penis enlargement just click here”—which we’re sure you understand, because we didn’t use punctuation.