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What is it about the text messages and emails sent by older people that make me feel like I'm having a stroke? (jorts.horse)

submitted 1 year ago by fathermcgruder@jorts.horse to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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What is it about the text messages and emails sent by older people that make me feel like I'm having a stroke?

Maybe they're used to various shortcuts in their writing that they picked up before autocorrect became common, but these habits are too idiosyncratic for autocorrect to handle properly. However, that doesn't explain the emails I've had to decipher that were typed on desktop keyboards. Has anyone else younger than 45 or so felt similarly frustrated with geriatrics' messages?

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[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 69 points 1 year ago (35 children)

Gonna need some examples methinks. But the tendency to overuse ellipses is right tf up there

[–] herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 44 points 1 year ago (18 children)

Yes! This is what I always associate with older folks texting or emailing. I use ellipses a fair bit for (my attempts at) comedic effect. Some older folks are using them on a whole different level, having this weird habit of ending sentences with them where most people would use a period or exclamation point. It can come off sounding very ominous.

"Bill is coming over."

Okay, cool. Have fun with Bill.

"Bill is coming over ..."

Grandpa, are you in trouble? What's Bill going to do???

[–] pelletbucket@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I saw some video where they explained boomers use the ellipses to indicate missing words? like they're acknowledging that it's a sentence fragment and not a complete sentence.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 26 points 1 year ago

That's actually how the comment above interpreted the ellipses. The difference is more, why the words are missing.

The "modern" interpretation is that you are too annoyed or afraid to finish the sentence. In the sense of "son of a ...." in case of annoyance.

The "old" interpretation is either temporal (I'm not finished writing) or simply an acknowledgement that the fragment is just a fragment.

So the modern reader will interpret much more context into the missing words, leading to the exchange above.

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