Are full stops passive aggressive?

[Samas]

Are full stops really passive-aggressive now? According to my colleague they are, especially in text messages. Apparently, ending a sentence correctly is no longer “neutral” but somehow comes across as cold or hostile.

yabu= full stops are indeed PA
yanbu= of course they’re not

Question marks are fine, don't worry.

It's those semicolons you have to watch out for, terribly oppressive.

What about a good old interrobang?!

I think those should make a comeback.

You know what's even worse than ending messages with an x?

Work colleagues who mean to put x, but keep hitting c by mistake. I was confused for weeks what it meant. From context, I'd guessed it meant the same thing as :s

Three of mine said that a while back. After a week or so of my ending messages with ". Not mad." it was decided that they'd accept my formal punctuation style and not assume I was pissed off by it.

Somewhat amusingly the child who was most put out by my old fashioned ways now works in a very formal office and I can tell when she's been texting a colleague just before me because her texts arrive with proper punctuation 😂

I had to google that, and it's the punctuation mark I never knew I needed. I fully support its integration back into mainstream communication.

What do we want - interrobangs
When do we want them - about 20 years ago

Ha ha ha.
He's not illiterate, far from it.
He knows how to communicate in different situations, that's actually a skill and adaptability.
Go and be rude elsewhere.

No-one has dared to object to my use of them, so I'm assuming they're taken as intended.

Surely the most passive aggressive way to sign off is with an ellipsis.

It's like a punctuated version of 'You better not leave me on read right now...'

Oh yes, I will admit to using a pass agg ellipsis on occasion.

It's basically the equivalent of 'have a little think about what I just said'.

I cannot begin to imagine work colleagues ending a message with an x.
It’d be grossly unprofessional.

.

I don't think it's as much of an age thing as people are suggesting. I have senior colleagues, in their early 60s, who absolutely use periods at the end of emails and Teams messages when they're intending to be passive aggressive.

Or were they being passive aggressive anyway and just happened to use correct punctuation?

Seems there must be something other than the punctuation which makes you so sure of their intent?

!!

When their tone is passive aggressive, they also use a period. When their tone is friendly or level, they don't.

I am 66 and had no idea either! DC have never complained, but now I come to think of it, DS never uses full stops in messages.

I got pulled up in my last job for not signing off internal comms between our team with an X like they all did... Manager said that whilst it wasn't a requirement, she believed it helped to create a caring environment given we all worked remotely 😏

Completely depends. Sometimes when you use them to someone you never use them with people are doing that for emphasis. To be colder than usual.

With colleagues they are normal as they are correct and colleagues aren’t your besties.

I tend to use full stops in my text messages when I am not pleased. I didn't realise I was doing it till someone pointed out to me that they could tell I was in a bad mood by the amount of full stops I was using. Texting is a whole language in and of itself

Yes, the content of the communications, and how that correlates with their use of punctuation. E.g.

"Thanks!" is used fairly often, where the tone of the message is friendly.

"Thanks" or "Thanks," is mostly used for neutral messages.

"Thanks." is reserved for their passive aggressive messages only.

OMG those exclamation marks are sooo triggering. Couldn’t you have put a safety [ ] around them.

I call you out as a Typographic Elliptical Revisionist Punctuationalist.

Number of full stops.

Sorry, my bad, thought this was a grammar thread, didn’t realise it was a punctuation thread.

Thanks is a great example. I've never seen it written as
" Thanks." except when the typist was clearly being passive-aggressive.

However, in my experience "Thank you." can be meant sincerely.