Maybe you read an exclamation point as shouting when it was intended to be friendly. When it comes to texting, there can be plenty of tonal confusion, especially among people of different generations.

THE SINCERE EXCLAMATION POINT. The exclamation point has long been seen as a marker of loudness or excitement, ... The ellipsis, a row of three dots, stands for an omitted section of text.

We got the exclamation point from the British, along with all things verbal. Yet the British are at a loss as to how it entered their parlance in the first place.

For my job, I send lots e-mails, and I have to be fast about it. The easiest way to seem friendly and not like a robot is to just throw on some exclamation points. I'm worried it's gotten out of ...

So we have to get it right the first time.”Are you the hostile punctuator in your group chat or Slack channels??? We asked experts how to tell—and how to fix it.You use periods when you don’t have ...

I used to help my mom with her Facebook account. Our weekly tutorials were fraught, ending in either frustration ("No, Lydia, for the last time, you may not poke your father") or metaphysical musings.