When I was on the New York Times Learning Network recently--I often go there to look for ideas for non-grammar-related topics to write about in these emails--I came across this article about punctuation use in English texts and the differences in habit between people of different demographic groups, like old people vs. young people, middle-aged people (so-called “Millennials”) vs. teenagers, young men vs. young women etc.
Some examples mentioned in this humorous article include how older people often end texts with periods (full stops) -- and this is often ridiculed by younger people as overly formal and terse, how Millennials (roughly people in their 30s and 40s, like me) often end texts with an emoji or a “lol” (the internet-abbreviated form of the expression “laugh out loud”) to soften their tone, and how some people have the tendency to “overuse” exclamation points in texts in an attempt to convey their enthusiasm, only to have the intended tone backfire on them, haha.
This discussion of how conversational tone is conveyed through punctuation use in informal writing has been very interesting to me ever since I read the fascinating book “Because Internet” by the linguist Gretchen McCulloch.
(The title “Because Internet” is itself interesting—you all know that “because” is, in systematic English grammar, a subordinating conjunction that links a complete clause. However, in internet language and memes, there is a kind of intentionally “funny” grammatical change where people deliberately violate the grammatical role of “because” by putting a noun phrase after it, as if to express that that reason is exceedingly obvious and does not necessitate a full clause for elaboration. The book title imitates this internet usage by putting the noun “internet” after “because.”)
This book came out during the pandemic and became a bestselling “pop Linguistics” book. You might have heard of the term “pop science book” before -- the term refers to a genre of non-fiction that is about scientific topics but is written for the general public without background knowledge in that area. “Pop” stands for “popular.”
In the same way, a “pop (popular) Linguistics” book is a book that is about a Linguistics topic but is written for the general public. You can see why this book appealed to me! Haha. There are usually not many of these on bestseller lists.
Anyway, the book is about the interesting linguistic changes in English since the advent of the internet and a new genre of writing -- “informal writing” that imitates speech and conversational tone-- became its own thing.
As the book points out, prior to the internet, texting, and emails, “writing” was by definition always “formal,” because there were no media for “informal writing” that imitated speech. Even personal letters were treated as pieces of formal writing.
Since texting became a new technology, however, “informal writing” has evolved as a completely separate register of writing, one whose purpose is to imitate speech and to capture the tones, emotions, and subtleties that we normally convey through non-verbal signifiers in conversation, like intonation, facial expression, body language, etc.
Because of this, we needed to find a way in informal writing to convey conversational tone, and punctuation use became one of the main tools to do this in place of intonation and other non-verbal cues.
I won’t repeat all the points in the book, obviously, since I read it long ago and can’t remember everything anyway, but reading the recent article in the New York Times made me think of it again.
Specifically, it reminded me of how the book pointed out that the reason why many older people end texts with ellipses (“...”) is because, prior to texting, the closest thing to “informal writing” that existed was postcard writing.
Because postcards have limited physical space, it was a punctuation convention in postcard writing to put ellipses (“...”) after sentences to convey a sense that there is more to say, only no space.
As such, when older people started texting, they carried this punctuation convention from postcard writing -- their closest prior experience to informal writing -- to texts.
I thought that was fascinating! It explained why so many of my older bosses when I was younger did this in texts. Haha.
This deeply-researched book also explains many other linguistic changes and phenomena (like emojis!) regarding informal writing with explanations that non-linguists can easily understand. I highly recommend it if you are looking for a reading challenge!
If you want to learn more about how to apply Linguistics concepts to your English learning:
最近我在瀏覽《紐約時報》Learning Network 的網站時——我經常去那裡找一些與文法無關、可以在較輕鬆的電郵裡寫的題材——看到一篇關於英文短訊和電郵中標點符號使用、以及不同族群（例如年長人士 vs 年輕人士、三四十歲的「千禧世代」人士 vs 青少年、年輕男性 vs 年輕女性等）之間使用習慣差異的文章。
這篇幽默的文章舉了幾個例子，如：年長者經常在短訊結尾加上句號——而這常常被年輕人嘲笑為太正式、太冷硬；又例如千禧世代（大概三、四十歲的人，像我）經常在訊息最後加上一個 emoji 或「lol」（「laugh out loud」的網絡縮寫）來柔化語氣；還有一些人喜歡在訊息裡「過度使用」驚嘆號，試圖表達熱情，但往往反而造成反效果，哈哈。
自從我幾年前讀過語言學家 Gretchen McCulloch 那非常有趣的書《Because Internet》之後，就一直對「在非正式寫作裡，標點符號怎樣傳達對話語氣」這件事特別有興趣。
（《Because Internet》這書名已很有趣--「Because」大家知道本在英文文法中是一個連接完整子句的附屬連接詞，但是，在網絡用語和迷因 memes 中，有一種為了「搞笑」的文法變化，是故意違反「because」的文法角色，在它後面加一個名詞組，如「internet」，去表達「就是因為這原因，不用再以一個子句去解釋了，已經很明顯了」這情感。這書名就是模仿了這個故意違反「because」的文法角色的網絡語言。）
這本書是在疫情期間出版的，並成為一本非常暢銷的「流行語言學（pop Linguistics）」書。你可能聽過「pop science book（科普書）」這個詞——指的是以科學主題為內容，但寫給一般大眾閱讀的非小說類書籍。「Pop」就是「popular（大眾化）」的意思。
同樣地，「pop（popular） Linguistics」書就是講語言學主題、但寫給一般讀者看的書。你應該可以想像為什麼這本書那麼吸引我！哈哈。這類書在暢銷書榜上其實不多見。
總之，這本書談的是自從互聯網出現後，英文的各種有趣變化，尤其是一種新的書寫風格——「模仿口語的非正式書寫」——如何逐漸變成獨立的文體。
正如書中指出，在互聯網、短訊和電郵出現之前，「書寫」本身一定是「正式」的，因為那時根本沒有任何模仿口語的「非正式書寫」媒介。就算是私人信件也是正式書寫。
但隨著短訊技術的出現，「非正式書寫」演變成一種完全獨立的寫作類型，其目的是模仿口語溝通，捕捉我們在對話中依靠「非語言」訊號（如語調、表情、肢體語言等）來傳達的語氣、情感與意思上的細微差別。
正因為如此，我們在非正式書寫中也必須找到「書面」的方法來傳達口語語氣，而標點符號就成為替代語調和其他非語言線索的主要工具之一。
我當然不會在這裡細講書中的所有內容，畢竟我很久以前讀完，也不太記得全部細節了，但最近讀到《紐約時報》的這篇文章，又讓我想起那本書。
特別是，它讓我想起書中提過的一點：為什麼很多年長者在短訊裡習慣用刪節號（「…」）結尾——因為在短訊出現之前，他們唯一接觸過最接近「非正式書寫」的形式，就是明信片。
由於明信片空間有限，當時的書寫慣例是在句子後加上刪節號（「…」），表示「還有話沒說完，但沒空間了」。
因此，當年長者開始使用短訊時，他們就把這種從明信片寫作延續下來的標點習慣——也是他們過去唯一接觸過的「非正式書寫」模式——帶入了短訊中。
我覺得超有趣！這完全解釋了為什麼我年輕時的一些年長上司在傳訊息時常常這樣做！
這本研究非常深入的書還解釋了許多與非正式寫作相關的語言變化與現象（包括 emoji 😁），並以一般人容易理解的方式呈現。我非常推薦這本書——如果你想挑戰一下自己的英文閱讀的話！
如果你想了解怎樣把語言學知識融入英文學習中：