The message beyond the HN title actually has potential. However, the author focuses in some odd places for me.

As far as punctuation, ending periods actually have negative emotion in text vernacular now for younger audiences and should almost never be used in 1-1 messaging. Exclamation points, commas, and question marks, great!

For abbreviations, it's simply know your audience. You should use them when everyone in the room knows them, but you have to think about that first before use. The step of thinking about it is a great mental step to add, but the article presents it more as a steadfast rule. Also, expanding them in parentheses can be a chance to educate your audience for the future even when you have people who don't know, like I'll do below :P

To me, the smallest point was actually the most interesting and valuable, and it was skated over entirely - communicating emotion and sentiment, particularly through emoji use. With WFH (Work From Home) especially, communicating emotion is very socially helpful. I've found a lot of engineers think "well I don't care/need so I'll skip the flowery additions for efficiency" and then leave many non-tech people and some engineering coworkers to decipher if this random slack ask is mad, passive aggressive, inquisitive, or a check-in. This has far worse effects longterm often than an unknown acronym.

Adding emojis can solve this, or if you don't like those, literally giving more social context in words can also do the trick. When we're talking in person, we always communicate emotion, even when it's not the primary purpose. I think many would do well to include that in their online messaging as well :)

    I didn't know that. He did it.

    I didn't know that he did it.

As someone of the younger generation who grew up always using mostly proper punctuation over texts, and avoided abbreviations for common terms this hits home.

I'm 28 for reference, and I get VERY different vibes from those younger than me who join slack, and those older (40+ or so). The difference in meaning for different punctuation for these crowds is SO evident, I feel like I'm always playing translator for even the language I grew up speaking and writing.

The biggest example of this is the ellipsis among the older crowd. In informal messaging that I grew accustomed to it went from being overused, to nowadays seeming like you are being sarcastic or angry about something. So among the younger crowd I see it almost never used anymore. On the other hand the older generations picked it up from how we used to use it, as a sort of pause. But they co-opted it as probably the most common punctuation used in their messaging. I'm not joking when I will sometimes receive a message from an older coworker that will contain an ellipsis every 5 words or so.

It's always been interesting deciphering the actual meaning of some messages based on solely age of the sender.

This all to say, deciphering punctuation at all in informal writing is an interesting game.

Clarity in communication is undervalued. Things like punctuation are a great start, but we can go even further. Avoiding acronyms where possible is often good for this, particularly if you can build a culture where asking people to expand acronyms happens.

A tough side-effect of this I've seen though is the possibility of excluding some non-native English speakers, both in terms of making it harder for them to consume content because of it using a wider vocabulary, and making it harder for them to succeed (in things like interviews) because of higher communications standards.

I don't know where I fall on this, because it does allow for better communication, it just requires more from participants. In fact poor communicators would be excluded regardless of their native language.

I've spent my whole life using punctuation and full sentences when typing. Does it make me seem cold? Maybe, but it'd take more conscious effort for me to change it at this point, which sorta defeats the purpose of some commenters here claiming that it would increase communication speed, at least for me. As far as reading what others write, I really don't care, and find it sort of bizarre that anyone would.

I feel like people complaining about this didn't grow up in the IRC/IM era. It probably depends on your corp's culture as well, but for us, Slack is a very informal communcation mechanism. If you need to write something formal, you use an email. Slack is equivalent to shouting out to the room (as if you were there in person).

I can't debate what some perceive as costly because it's an honest reaction to reading some forms of text.

In my case, all lowercase and lack of punctuation don't bother me or slow me down. (I'll agree on uncommon acronyms hindering understanding.)

To reduce some frustrations... listen to linguist McWhorter explaining that people should think of texting (or Slack) as "transcribed informal speech" -- instead of formal writing.[1]

That said, the author Mitch Lee's bio says he's a cofounder of Penny. If you are employed by him and are communicating at his company via Slack, it's better for your career if you follow his guidelines.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmvOgW6iV2s

In academic writing, the general rule is that whenever you introduce an acronym, you must first use the full version.

For example: You must always be mindful of privacy laws when handling personal health information (PHI). Remember, that you may only access PHI when necessary to do your job, and never to fulfill personal curiosity about a patient.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for a chat room because it's not meant to be read from beginning to end. My personal rule is to never use acronyms, unless I can follow the above rule.

I've worked in many different industries, and learning acronyms has been a consistent and pointless barrier to achieving productivity. I don't want to put that onto anyone else. Even worse, you run the risk of your reader ignoring the lesson entirely, simply because they don't know what the acronym means.

In and of itself, "PHI" does not seem any more important than any other acronym. On the other hand, "personal health information," has an obvious connotation of importance.

There is a good book about the evolution of written communication as the Internet evolved. "Because Internet" by Gretchen McCulloch goes into some of the subtle implications of using punctuation such as periods ending sentences, capitalization, etc. Text makes it difficult to convey emotions and subtlety so even using punctuation can add signal to the communication channel. It turns out there is relatively powerful tonal communication through those deviations on "standard" English grammar rules. Similarly, Emoji also acts as a replacement for gesturing.

Very interesting book and worth reading to understand how to tailor communication for the medium.

I feel like (so, of course, this is how I use instant messaging) periods at the end of a message suggest the logical conclusion of a thought, and are far too formal to use with every message. Email, sure, but not chat. (I do use question marks and capitalize in general, but periods in particular seem strange to me.)

There is a cargo-cult tech management trend where people use low-effort, sloppy messages and even rudeness as a status signal. I get that the simplest things are the important ones, and wall of text details are usually prevarication, but Slack isn't Tinder.

Like project managers think they're channelling Bezos with "?" messages. I can see how some people interpret "stupid" as "powerful," when that's their experience of authority and then they just imitate it, but it's worth being aware that it breeds contempt.

I think the other side of this is that some folks tend toward perfectionism in their writing, so in an atmosphere where writing standards are perceived as very high, people can spend way too much time and energy trying to put things in just the right way, when they otherwise could have gotten their ideas across in a few seconds using a "stream-of-consciousness" style that is more similar to casual conversation. It can become a huge time sink.

Also, if people feel like casual or "sloppy" communication will be judged negatively, they might often choose to say nothing at all instead of sharing half-baked ideas, which probably reduces organic creativity and innovation, even if it leads to fewer interruptions.

So while I get the point this post is making, there are costs on both sides here. And some of the worst downsides of the casual style (interruptions, in particular) can be minimized by adding more structure around sync vs. async communication, protected focus time, and using different mediums when appropriate.

I agree, and disagree. Remember that context matters a ton. Are you posting in a company wide channel, or DM-ing you're close coworkers? Are you posting about an update, or just sharing something random to your team. All that plays into this more than the author expands on (he does quickly mention it in the last section). I think you just have to be a human, esp. in times where everyone is working from home. I think if you followed this advice in every channel, in every scenario, your company Slack culture would start to suffer a ton, and feel very cold (not that the author says that, just an FYI). This is good advice generally, don't get me wrong, but just be smart to when you apply it. Don't ruin your culture, and come off as a robot/cold person in every message you post.

Something the author didn't mention (or maybe it's simply a specific case but I think demands explicit mention) is that it lowers the barrier of entry for new employees.

I started a new job ~2 months ago and things that everyone thinks everyone understands I simply did not. These weren't documented acronyms but rather "socially understood" acronyms that meant each time I didn't understand something I had to message someone asking.

While onboarding the amount of times I message people asking for help is so much that it gets uncomfortable (for me, at least) so minimizing the acronyms would be super helpful.

As a counter-point, though, it could be that each culture/tribe needs their own language that only they can understand and it creates this feeling of comradery? Just a thought.

I think this entire post can be distilled into the following:

The time you spend composing a message should be proportional to the number of people in your intended audience.

You can use as many periods as you'd like (including 0) when messaging me, as long as you don't just start with just "hi"

Not that I use Slack anymore, I use Discord at work...

I disagree with the details of this argument, the costs seem strawman ish. You quickly get used to writing styles, chat systems are an ongoing ecosystem and you adapt quickly.

What I would suggest is to try and make your messages self contained with context. Avoid private messaging and ask things on open channels, too much information is hidden away in private messages. Even if your question is really for a specific person. Seeing conversations helps build narratives and context for teams.

Punctuation, capital letters, proper spelling, etc. exist for a reason: They're a standardized set of tools for making our writing clearer and easier to read. In a professional setting, they also indicate a level of thoughtfulness and attention to detail. In my mind, at least.

If you can write clearly without using these tools or if you're writing in a situation where style is more important than clarity, fine. Go nuts.

If you just can't be bothered to make, like, five extra keypresses... C'mon, man.

I can't help but feel like the real point the author is trying (not very successfully) to communicate is the importance of considering how other people will interpret and understand your messages. This includes content (will they understand this acronym?), but also includes how they are likely to interpret the tone of your message. Punctuation, grammar, emojis, etc. help to communicate tone -- but that doesn't lend itself to a blanket "always use punctuation" statement. Being too formal can appear cold and aloof; being too informal can appear apathetic or unkind.

It's also important to consider the range of reactions. For those who understand an acronym, they likely won't even notice; for those who don't understand it, they risk losing face and potentially looking like an idiot when they have to ask what the acronym means. The "time saved" is helpful, sure, but considering how people will respond goes beyond "how much time will they spend asking a follow-up question?" and also includes "how will they feel if they don't understand this?"

I don't think this is good generalized advice.

* Posting in a highly-visible channel where most/if not all people will lack context. Treat it like an email and make sure it's punctually and grammatically correct. * Posting in a team channel where the attitude is casual. Pump those messages out pretty much like you're talking them.

> this [this fast and loose style] interrupts more productive work and deters deep thinking

This doesn't mesh with how I feel toward Slack. Slack itself is the thing that's disrupting my productivity and deterring deeper thinking by pinging me all the time. When I open Slack, the vast majority of the time, I'm looking to express my point as clearly AND concisely as possible so I can get back to doing whatever it was, which is 99% of time more important. As a result I use (or don't use) grammatical conventions, capitalization, and emoji depending on the context of my message and what will allow me to get my entire message across the fastest, and hopefully correctly.

If I'm messaging the person I've pairing with all day, or if I'm coordinating with my team about who will pick up a story, I'm much less likely to give my message all the proper formatting. These people what I'm like and how I tend to communicate, and so I can rely on that prior knowledge to "cut corners" here and there. I'm also much, much more likely to use emoji because I can communicate my intentions and my "intonation" nearly instantly, without having to sit there and worry about wordsmithing my whole message.

That being said, if I'm message in a large public channel that perhaps has multiple teams or belongs to a team I don't normally interact with, I'll spend much more time wordsmithing and editing to make sure I'm following proper conventions - mostly for the sake of clarity.

It does make some very salient points (think about how others could misinterpret your message, expand acronyms/use them sparingly, write to your audience, etc.) but I think they bought a little bit too much into the "Slack has replaced email" argument. For me, the main benefit of Slack over email is the lowered barrier to entry to starting a conversation and the ability to keeping it flowing, and part of achieving that is being okay with lowering the standards of communication.

This will not have a positive or negative impact on anything.

This post is confusing to me. It's titled "Or, a case for using punctuation in Slack", and then spends almost the rest of the post discussing the issue with acronyms/initialisms/shorthand.

I totally agree about shorthand. It can be unnecessarily ambiguous. But punctuation isn't related to acronyms, I don't think? As others have pointed out, punctuation over instant-messaging services can add meaning you don't intend. I generally don't capitalize the first letter of sentences or end messages with periods in IM applications.

If they had just named it "A case for avoiding use of shorthand in Slack", I'd 100% agree.

Here is a pet theory of mine: the quality of the discussion on an Internet forum is directly related to the quality of grammar and punctuation. HN scores excellently in this regard. But perhaps this is just my bias. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unfortunately, text (or Slack) messages with a period at the end are also perceived as less sincere, and sometimes passive-aggressive:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2...

https://lifehacker.com/dont-use-periods-in-texts-1843744818

The best form of communication is ultimately based on the amount of shared context (Eg: acronyms), so it’s silly to create rules per the communication medium — slack, email, HN comments, etc. Even within a medium, a slack DM to a friend has very different shared context from a message to a company-wide channel. Being mindful of that, and communicating respectfully, regardless of the actual medium, is likely to be far more useful. Nothing special about Slack.

For me, respectful written communication also includes proper punctuation & capitalization — since it makes reading easier.

I'm 20 and I've noticed how true this is. I find myself "code switching" depending on who I'm messaging at work.

I've had a few profs that would the ellipsis for every single sentence, and my brain subconsciously treated his emails as mysterious. It's not too bad once you get used to it.

There's also the weird thing of younger people like myself avoiding proper punctuation/capitalization for the aesthetic. Mainly because a lack of proper writing can make certain messages feel more "relaxed" and casual, if that makes sense.

I think it's funny you think the ellipsis abuse was something the older folks picked up from your generation.

This sounds highly anecdotal: I am nearing 40 myself and have a bunch of 40+ colleagues, yet I rarely see them use ellipsis!

So in order to avoid throwing your anecdata altogether, how many people of each age group did you communicate with using text form?

re: ellipsis

`,,,` have been a funny, casual alternative I've seen from and accidently seemed to have picked up from younger folk.

One convention I've found useful is to define any acronym, or even any word or phrase that's used in a nonstandard way, the first time it's used in a conversation. Additionally, acronyms frequently pick up additional meanings than those you get from the individual words that comprise them, so you probably should not just expand the acronym the first time you use it. Consider the acronym "DDL", as in "Data Definition Language". If you're not familiar with the term, you will be equally lost whether someone says "The prod DB is down because the third DDL migration of the release hung" or "The production database is down because the third Data Definition Language migration of the release hung". If you instead say "The prod DB is down because the third DDL migration (DDL migrations = schema changes like adding or removing columns or tables)", everyone who's worked with a database before knows what happened even if they don't necesssarily know exactly what DDL stands for.

Acronyms are nice when you've got a long, frequently used phrase, as long as everyone in the conversation knows what they mean. I think banning acronyms entirely would be eliminating all of the useful value from the practice of using acronyms, while not necessarily addressing the largest problem that the use of acronyms causes.

the original article confuses clarity with formality

you can be perfectly clear in lowercase and with sparse punctuation

acronyms can be ambiguous, but to say then that we should all write formally is a huge leap

frankly anyone who can't write clearly like this is a poor writer

i also doubt it really excludes non-native speakers unless you're using a lot of slang/abbreviations

I think the goal should not be to lower the standards for everyone, it should be to help bring people up to the basic standards.

The more often people write informally, the more difficult it is for non-native speakers to learn correct grammar. I almost always use full sentences and correct punctuation in all forms of communication. But I make sure to always write correctly when I'm communicating with non-native speakers. I am doing them a disservice, otherwise. And it's also frustrating to me when I'm learning a language and what I'm reading from native speakers is below even my capability.

Also, I think there's a difference between making mistakes in a foreign language, and being lazy or not caring. For example, capitalizing the first letter of a sentence or the word "I" is something that 99% of people know they should do. So that mistake is not usually due to lack of fluency in a language.

I think coldness/warmth of the messaging style is much more dependent on emoji use, at least in Slack.

I couldn't imagine writing without at least attempting to use proper grammar. Especially in German where ignoring capitalization makes a difference of night and day.

My reasoning has been similar to the one of the author, but more on a "positivity" than a plain productivity level. If it's easy for others to read my messages and not having to puzzle over them, I hope that it will leave them with overall a more positive association of writing/communicating with me. And that not only goes for professional texting, but writing with friends (or dating) as well. I know it won't always come out perfect, but overall I think it shows some level of respect towards the other person.

> As far as reading what others write, I really don't care, and find it sort of bizarre that anyone would.

The main one that trips me up is when people use acronyms I'm not familiar with. Then I try to Google for them, but sometimes it's hard to find, or ambiguous.

Could you explain this more because it's completely foreign to me. For me a period is the end of a sentence. It has nothing to do with ending the message I'm trying to get across. Is this a cultural or generational or professional field difference? I'd never heard of the idea that a period would be too formal in any context.

  Hey.

  Statement: We got the tickets for tonight!
  Response: Yay.

I feel like periods mark the end of a sentence. So I use them all the time, even in text messages.

I've had people get actually angry with me for doing it.

I agree with you that for your final sentence it's optional. That said, I still do it.

But that's kind of ancillary to the point of this post, no? The main point it's trying to drive home is be as informative as possible. Don't assume your audience knows your tone, your conventions, your abbreviations.

I suspect this is largely for those who have newly entered the work force, who may only know texting style communication (with friends, shared corpus of knowledge), and formal business communication, and this is to warn them that Slack, while less formal than the latter, doesn't imply the shared context that the former would often have.

Periods generally end sentences, and if that sentence convenes a thought, they do conclude the thought. I consider that to be the default mode of conversation, regardless of whether it's chat or mail or whatever. I like it when people take the effort to bring their thoughts to a conclusion rather than flooding me with cheap stream-of-consciousness-style conversation (cheap for them, not for me), and I tend to treat others the same way I want to be treated.

If I want to explicitly leave a thought open for continuation, especially in chat style communication, I place three periods at the end of a sentence. I consider that an invitation to the reader's mind to conclude the sentence. So it's either one period or three of them for me, but none at all just feels wrong.

I frequently hit return rather than typing a period. However, I feel that's not really good practice, as I often see myself sending a lot of small messages which could probably be better summarised with a couple well thought out sentences.

Same, but not sure why now that you mention it. I'm a stickler for grammar, oxford commas and all, but in messaging, periods feel...rude at times. I can't explain why, perhaps it is the 'conclusion in thought' aspect.

Whenever I read a sentence with a period in my head, I read it in a very flat tone, since the period explicitly excludes any exclamation point, question mark, emoji, etc. So that makes it sound weird when someone uses a period in casual conversation, because if I was talking to them on person they would usually have some kind of emotion.

For example, I would read "Sounds good" in a generally positive way just like when someone is saying that in person, but when I read "Sounds good." I read it without any emotion in my head which sounds wierd.

I have been chatting via text, as a major form of communication, for more than 20 years and at least 2/3s of my life. Before this thread, I have never even contemplated a period having any meaning more than the end of a though. And I certainly had no position of authority, so that didn't affect anything.

I am really curious how this evolved, and how I missed it being something people think. My biases tend to lean towards viewing people who don't use punctuation and capitalization as being less professional. I couldn't care less in something like a random chat in discord. But for Slack, as a work tool, I prefer to stay "professional".

I wonder what other seemingly unspoken biases are out there? Especially in a time where we are spending much more time in text instead of in person.

I don't agree that putting a period in casual textual communication is inherently hostile. I also don't agree that those who do are just simply unaware of the chaos they are causing.

At the end, though, you're still making a judgement about someone with very little information and you have a choice not to do that.

In my experience this is pretty much a universal norm for all Americans below 30. Putting a period at the end of a sentence may come across as curt or rude.

Note: Rules are different for multi-sentence messages and single sentence messages. For messages with multiple sentences, its fine to insert periods between all sentences, but skip the last one. The above only applies to short messages with a single sentence.

> Also, how do you write (delineate, identify, etc) small, short sentences without periods?

oh that's easy

you just write one short sentence at a time

like this :-)

I see it done that way a lot where each small sentence is its own message. Even more annoyingly, they often do it in a main channel on Slack after the message they're responding to, instead of "replying in thread".

If the message is long enough to actually have multiple sentences, each individual sentence has a period. The last sentence simply drops the period.

It's not the use of periods on a per-sentence basis, it's just the last period. For certain demographics this evokes a tone of abrupt and unfriendly finality. But it depends on context.