{"id":201,"date":"2025-09-12T13:25:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T13:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/good-worldwide.go-vip.net\/upworthy\/2025\/09\/12\/gen-zers-say-periods-are-aggressive-ex1\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T13:25:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T13:25:00","slug":"gen-zers-say-periods-are-aggressive-ex1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goodinc.com\/qa-upworthy\/2025\/09\/12\/gen-zers-say-periods-are-aggressive-ex1\/","title":{"rendered":"My Gen Z kids say periods in my texts are ‘aggressive.’ I’m not stopping anytime soon."},"content":{"rendered":"

“Hi.” … “Omg, are you mad at me?”<\/em><\/p>

As a Gen X mom of three Gen Z kids<\/a> in their teens and 20s<\/a>, there’s a lot that I’m willing to concede and even celebrate when it comes to the gap between our generations. I love Gen Z’s global consciousness, their openness about mental health<\/a>, their focus on inclusivity, and their insistence on wearing comfortable shoes with formal wear. But there’s one Gen Z feature<\/a> that I simply cannot abide, and that is the weaponization of basic punctuation.<\/em><\/p>

“It freaks me out when you say ‘yes period’ in a text,” my high schooler told me one day. “It feels so aggressive, like I feel like I’m in trouble or something.” I stared at him incredulously as his 20-year-old sister laughed but then agreed with him. “It does! The period makes it feel like you’re mad,” she said.<\/p>

\"texting
Misunderstandings happenu00a0when people start changing what punctuation means. Screenshot via Annie Reneau<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure> <\/p>

Ah yes, the period, the most benign punctuation mark of them all, is “aggressive.” Far from being a mere generational quirk, this misinterpreting of normal punctuation in text messages as aggressive or angry could result in serious communication breakdowns. Talking by text is already hard enough, and now we’re adding a layer of meaning that older folks don’t have a clue about?<\/p>

The kids are serious about this, though. According to Gen Zers, pretty much any time someone puts a period at the end of a text, it means they’re mad or irritated, as if the period is being emphasized<\/em>.<\/p>

\"period,
Unless you literally say, Giphyu00a0GIF by Sony Pictures Television<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure> <\/p>

At the risk of sounding like a dinosaur, I’d like to point out that reading into periods in texts like this is just silly. It seems silly when the young folks do it with each other, but it’s extra<\/em> silly when they do it with adults who didn’t grow up with texting and have ingrained grammatical habits that aren’t easy to shake. (And frankly, some of us don’t want to shake\u2014I’m a former English teacher, for crying out loud. Might as well ask me to start misspelling words on purpose.)<\/p>

In no reasonable world can “Yes.” be automatically viewed as aggressive. It’s just not. Neither is “Time to get off the computer.” Neither is “Got it.” Or “OK.” or “Sure.” I understand that texting conventions have evolved such that end punctuation isn’t viewed as necessary, but when did we start assigning negative intentions to very basic punctuation? A period should not be read as anything more than a matter-of-fact, neutral-toned statement, since we have other tools for conveying tone in writing\u2014capital letters, italics, bold, exclamation points. I mean, if I wanted to be aggressive, I’d text, “HEY<\/em>\u2014it’s time to GET OFF the COMPUTER!” We also have a slew of emojis to convey tone. A period is and has always been neutral. That’s literally the entire point of a period.<\/em><\/p>\n

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My 11 year old said putting full stops\/periods at the end of sentences is apparently considered passive-aggressive in casual communication by their generation. I have sat him down to lay some ground rules of grammar irrespective of how his generation feels.<\/p>— Rituparna Chatterjee (@MasalaBai) April 20, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote>