This generational texting addiction could be worse than using capital letters.
When typing a immense paragraph, older adults may usefulness what has been dubbed “Boomer ellipses” — more than one dots in a row also known as suspense issues — to detached concepts, unintentionally making messages more ominous or anxiety-inducing and irritating Gen Z.
“What, exactly, is going on with boomers and ellipses?” one Redditor inquired previous this era, pronouncing that their mother’s texting drives them “up a wall.”
“It comes off as passive-aggressive at worst, insane at best.”
The person gave an instance, explaining that their “Boomer neighbor” writes sorts like “Thanks…”
“Like what the f–k else needs to be said or implied? Why not ‘Thanks!’ ‘Thanks.’ or ‘Thanks :),’” the irate Redditor mentioned.
Commenters within the discussion board introduced imaginable causes for the “chronic” ellipses factor, like “bad education” or a solution to represent “gaps between thoughts.”
However Adam Aleksic, sometimes called the “etymology nerd,” unmistakable that it’s truly as a result of Boomers “grew up following different rules for informal communication.”
“Nowadays, if you wanna separate an idea, you just press enter and start a new line with a new thought,” he mentioned in a TikTok video.
“But it made less sense to do that for writing postcards or letters where you had to save space, so people back in the day learned to separate thoughts by using ellipses.”
For the reason that punctuation now implies one thing greater than its meant usefulness, he persevered, it’s perceived as “hesitation, annoyance or passive aggressiveness,” since this is how Zoomers and Millennials generally usefulness ellipses.
In spite of the dubiousness, Gen Xers and Boomers aren’t in a position to phase with the 3 menacing dots.
“I will probably use the ellipses until the day I die. It’ll be on my tombstone, it’ll be in my obituary,” a author who is going by way of Gen X Jess mentioned in a video online, arguing that her time, in flip, continues to be attempting to be told Gen Z acronyms and slang phrases.
Fellow TikTokkers likened the ellipses to a “pregnant pause” or so that you can sign “etc.,” arguing they “love the ellipses” and “can’t help” however usefulness it.
“You’ll have to pry the ellipsis out of my cold dead hands,” one viewer commented.
“Gen X here and I will NEVER let it go,” any other affirmative.
