They use so many elipses.... I don't get it....
It's not even a English thing, my granddad does the same in Chinese. Don't get it either.
I think it's because they're used to talking. There are absolutely pauses built into speech that are of indeterminate length or function, serving more as a space for social cues from your conversation partner. Depending on those cues, the space might be break for the other person, it might change what comes next, or it might simply be a pause. The elipses is a catch-all pause.
Now for written communication, none of that applies, but for short messages, people still expect to communicate casually. If you didn't grow up learning (and creating) ettiquette and convention for short message communication, I suppose you end up trying to emulate speech.
According to the book Because Internet which is about different communication styles on the internet, boomers do that because that's how they wrote on post cards and shit. It's supposed to be less ominous and more "yadda yadda." They intend it to be more casual. They use quotation marks to emphasize things as well, so you always get the sarcastic seeming stuff like '"PLEASE DON'T" jump in the trash compactor.' I'm sure millennials have some stupid seeming slang and habits but I wouldn't know cause that's who I always communicate with lol (oh you know what, I did have a classmate who insisted on ending every sentence with a question mark? like the written equivalent of up-talk? which was too funny.)
You know what? I talked to my little gen z sister and she said I have an ominous habit too! I'm one of those psychos that uses capitalization and periods in texts and tries to keep my whole message in as few texts as possible. Apparently that's not a thing for them and it comes off as SERIOUS and YOURE IN TROUBLE if you use periods and capitalize and give out big blocks of text instead of seperate texts for each thought. On the other hand I do not get discord speak and I can't wrap my head around the speed of discord chat or twitch chat, so there you go.
Ive definitely been in sensitive conversations over text and been like "hmm, should I end with a period? Nah, too formal."
I do both those types of texting depending on my mood and the tone of the conversation. I think the longer messages I sometimes send (and by long I mean like 2 complete sentences) never actually get read lol.
yeah i as a mid 30s boomer do it sometimes... i dunno it just feels right. i consciously try to limit it though because of negative boomer connotations fueled by posts like this... thanks for giving me a posting complex, this is ellipse user oppression.
They "don't" understand... What emphasis is. And also... Boomers aren't very "literate".
Idk about other places, but in the US most people are literate at only a grade school level.
It's why you can get boomers complaining about foreigners not speaking perfect unaccented English and ruining 'murica, all the while they're misspelling every other word
Finland scores very well in most reading/writing rankings but you wouldn't know that reading Facebook posts or newspaper comment sections
I'll be honest it's business brain. I know middle-aged lawyers who can't spell for shit.
Idk, but it comes off as super passive-aggressive
