Why do so many UK women post like this?

[user1477391263]

I'm British but a permanent resident of another country, which I moved to 25 years ago before social media was really a thing; my social media has people from all over the world, but the majority are not British.

I've come to realize that Facebook groups (etc.) that have British posters, such as local FB groups from my hometown, sound really different in the way people (or women, anyway) post!

There's a certain style, and it's very noticeable. It consists of using no punctuation apart from commas, no capitals, and putting kisses (x, or xx, or even xxx..... etc.) on the end of almost every post - sometimes on the end of every sentence. I rarely see this in women of other nationalities, even those who are not native speakers of English. Not every UK woman posts like this, for sure, but a lot of them do!

When did this become a thing? The oddest thing is that most of the women I know who post like this are perfectly intelligent people! I've had to sort of consciously train myself to (when reading a UK woman's online writing) mentally separate the posting style and the woman's assumed level of intelligence/education, because I know from experience that even well-read women with a lot of education quite often post like this.

I know it doesn't really...."matter," but I'm just a bit puzzled about when and why this became such a trend and why it seems to be so UK-specific. Is it about appearing friendly?

Get some new friends hun 💋 xxx

To be true though, a large part of the Romanian population are highly educated, incredibly clever and could eat us alive when it comes to communication in the 21st Century. It is nothing to joke about.

but how in the name of the wee man does it make people feel they look 'harsh' to use full stops?

I totally agree with you. It's other people thinking you're being harsh, not the person typing who's necessarily thinking it, then you have the agro to deal with of some person with attitude accusing you of all kinds and generally being a dick. It's just easier to be extra nice (which in some circles means not using full stops) and not risk causing offence to someone who could get into an argument with a mirror.

Sometimes they're taking the piss doing something they know darn well they shouldn't be doing and trying to justify it (telling to delete if you want whilst knowing they'll get their before that happens) eg posting on a vegetarian group "delete if not allowed but where can I find the cheapest meat please?".

Other times it's because of aggressive people making narky comments. Eg someone posts on farming group about best place to buy a horse and gets cyber shot for failing to realise a horse isn't an agricultural animal "and if you don't know that you're an idiot who shouldn't even own a cat" etc.

"Pic for attention" is because lots will scroll past a post without a pic. They're on SM to be entertained. Other people's problems aren't generally entertaining so they mindlessly scroll for a cute pic to aww at then maybe read what it's about and realise they have something helpful or supportive to say. It's not complicated. Adding a completely pointless but cute/beautiful/attention grabbing picture of something totally unrelated to your post means you're more likely to get a reply.

Typo

(telling to delete if you want whilst knowing they'll get their answer before that happens)

It’s because people don’t value written communication any more. Correcting SPAG is generally seen as rude and any questioning of slang or incorrect usage is dismissed as pedantic with the claim that ‘language evolves so shut up’.

We’re just expected to try harder to read any old illiterate text speak nonsense.

Haha, I do this!
Specifically I do it with messages not on Facebook. It is automatic now but there were initial reasons behind it.
I used to use punctuation with instant messages then someone I was friends with at work asked me why I was so formal. They thought I didn't want to chat because I was using punctuation....
The kisses is usually at the end of a statement or conversation. It can mean " i have had enough of chatti g for now" or "a goodbye I have to do something else now" it means I am not going to answer straight away but I am not ignoring you

On a similar note, I had someone else who was from Hong Kong at work tell me to not apologise so much. I was confused because I hadn't been apologise at all. I had been asking him to repeat what he said and speek louder. I had been asking this with the word "sorry" .... it is all in the tone

It's because Britain still has an obvious class system - with it is a style of speaking that makes your level of education fairly clear. This is true of many countries (though often more so in the UK) The difference with Britain is that there is a modern trend towards making it clear that you are definitely 'not posh'. People in the UK can be afraid of being considered snobbish.

Similar to the way men adopted Britpop and cockney-isms to prove they weren't middle/upper class twats, women have adopted 'hun' and 'xxxx' to assure readers they are approachable. Nobody wants to appear 'stuck up' (except the genuinely wealthy 5-10% who actually are, and they don't care what the rest think of them)

I've thought about this way too much, but i find it quite fascinating :-)

This isn’t the case.

I’m from a very working class background with a limited secondary education. I left school at 16 and later got qualifications to get me into university. I’ve always been a reader and have had a career as a part time journalist as well as writing PR stuff, newsletters, corporate announcements, websites and lots of other stuff.

It’s down to the fact that written communication isn’t valued, the rise of text messaging, the decrease in people’s attention spans and the expectation that people should just be able to type any old shit and if anyone questions it they’re a disgusting snob.

How many times have you seen someone post on MN that as long as posters get their feelings across, their language doesn’t matter? How many times have you seen someone post on MN and their post is unintelligible? The language does matter.

No it isn’t, not according to the way I use English. The Chicago Manual of Style recommends double quotation marks for everything except quotations within quotations, and as I have lived overseas for most of my adult life, I use the Chicago Manual of Style for work-related contents, as Chicago is the most widely-used style guide for US and international English.

At the end of the day, it’s about writing appropriately for the context you are writing for. I don’t worry too much about whether my social media posts are written to the kind of editorial standards required for a government White Paper or a corporate press release, but I do think it’s worthwhile to post in a way that is easy for other people to read and doesn’t create the impression of being thoughtless (as it may do if you constantly use a “jumble of upper and lower case,” for example).

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Quotations/faq0001.html#:~:text=For%20nonspecialist%20texts%2C%20Chicago%20recommends,comma%20or%20period%20goes%20inside.

https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/chicago-manual-style-explained#:~:text=Manual%20of%20Style%3F-,The%20Chicago%20Manual%20of%20Style%20is%20an%20American%20English%20style,US%20style%20in%20book%20publishing.

I do understand the motivations behind “pic for attention,” but it quickly becomes an arms race, as photo-laden posts crowd out any other posts which do not have photos; this means other people feel the need to add photos to their posts, and the plethora of photos makes it harder to scroll through a whole page, meaning that anything not at the top of the page tends to be ignored.

A lot of Facebook groups have banned the “pic for attention” phenomenon due to this.

You're spot on about the style differences, OP! Those who say this isn't a thing may not have a lot of non-UK influences in their social media. I lived in the UK and have lots of friends and family there, but now I live in Canada. The writing/posting styles are totally different! It's obviously not universal but the style in my British-based online groups is the "no capitals or punctuation...emoji...xx" style. My Canadian groups are full of people writing in complete sentences with a few emojis.

I will say there is a noticeable class component to this in the UK. And class is something that also exists in Canada, but isn't denoted through text and language as much as in the UK, so we have less variation in our communication styles I think.

😂👏👏

Agree with OP, it's very odd. I've no idea why they do it. And it's not my friends mostly; some of them do it, though! If you're ever in online discussions with women taking part, this happens a lot. You may have heard of a women's forum called Mumsnet? Loads of unpunctuated lol xx posts there.

In Japan, we have a lot of social media groups along the lines of "British Mothers in Tokyo," "UK Residents in Japan" etc., etc.

I can generally tell which women have been out here for a decade or longer, and which ones are short-term expats or newly-married women who've recently arrived, from the way they post. The latter tend to have blizzards of kisses, hahaha, sentences that ramble on and on with commas scattered along the way, and an apparent aversion to full stops.

This remains true regardless of age: a 40-year-old woman who's lived in Tokyo since 2010 will sound different to a 40-year-old woman who's arrived in the last year or so.

They do adapt their style after a while, thank goodness. Usually.

Probably because they all use phones

The only place I’ve noticed awful grammar with no punctuation or paragraphing is the occasional (usually very chaotic) post here on MN.
The xx’s are a very British thing, but can’t say I’ve seen people leave xx’s at the end of each sentence (at least not since I was a teenager) only a couple at the end of a message.

My mum rushes - I hope!

Otherwise, she regularly calls me a ‘cxxx’ at the end of her texts…

I've lived abroad for a decade and have definitely noticed this. I agree with you 100% op. I've been part of expat groups for the majority of this time and British/Irish posters generally do tend to write like this. I have not noticed people from other countries, including those who speak English as an additional language, speaking like this. I'm actually still part of a mums fb group from the UK city I grew up in as it useful for when I stay with my parents. It's definitely the most prolific for throwing punctuation to the wind with reckless abandon.

hey hun x I got mine from the chemist on the high street opposite starbucks u just ring them first and tell them then u pick them up highly recommend they are v helpful and the medicine worked v quickly hopefully your LO will be feeling better soon poor mite xxx

The groups are very helpful and I appreciate when people take the time to reply but I do notice this and find it interesting. I've not encountered any other nationalities doing the same and I've been in a lot of groups.

🤣👏

There are a certain type of woman who posts like this and adds lots of xxxxx and calls everyone HUN but thankfully those are not my people.

Me neither xxxx

I'm a UK woman and I try to punctuate my posts etc

I must be in different fb groups - I don’t recognise this phenomenon.

I haven’t got any experience of woman typing in capitals with no punctuation to be honest. Most women I know are very articulate and intelligent. Nothing wrong with a couple of kisses though. 🙄🙄