Most people might not notice the hints about their personalities revealed through their texting habits; we have become such an antisocial culture that our texts now contain inflection. We can’t sit in a crowded room anymore and start a conversation with that cute guy, but instead we retreat back to our phones and turn our caps lock on full-blast: OMG HE IS BEAUTIFULLLLLLL I THINK I AM GOING TO DIEEEE.
So, what do your little quirks say about you?
For starters, let’s look at the above 20-something femme who loves her caps lock. She thinks that you can hear how loud the letters are. We can then deduce that in real life, she would be yelling at you. “But that’s pretty basic,” you’re probably saying. Let’s look a little deeper: note her elongation of words. The more L’s she adds to the word ‘beautiful’ makes me want to believe that this guy is Patrick Dempsey or something. The extra E’s at the end of ‘die’? Completely unnecessary, but rest assured that this girl will be saved by Dr. McDreamy if she does go into cardiac arrest.
And what’s up with her run-on sentence? My third-grade teacher would cringe at that. It’s almost like she has one last breath to use, and this lack of punctuation demonstrates that maybe she didn’t learn anything about punctuation as a kid.
While lack of punctuation can make you come off as dense or crazy-excited, there are some people who take punctuation to a whole other level. Texting is instant, for crying out loud! It’s supposed to be quick snippets that leave you hanging, inviting more conversation to follow. I once dated a guy that would end every one of his texts with a period, the way one would when they finish a sentence in a paper. Even after a smiley face emoji, there would be a period. That period, to me, cancels out your smiley face emoji. You sound passive aggressive, dude! You sound upset and/or bored, and sometimes it seems like you don’t even want to talk to me! If you don’t want to talk to me, just tell me. But don’t pull this “I just love punctuation” garbage on me.
And speaking of punctuation, let’s hear it for those who overuse exclamation points! All! The! Time!! I admire your enthusiasm, but save it for cheering on your favourite team. It gets exhausting to see all those upside down i’s at the end of your sentences. Add that to the Caps lock and it’s like you’re trying to make me deaf. But in a battle between two evils, I suppose I would rather talk to a hyperactive person than someone that doesn’t really want to talk to me — even if it means getting yelled at over and over.
With that said, I’m sure everyone will now retreat back to their phones and become incredibly self-conscious about their typing. Take this as a kind of personality checkup that no one will TBH tell you. If you really want to win that guy over, maybe unstick your pinky from the caps lock, okay?
