Who knew it was bad manners to punctuate your texts?

Like, rude! Really rude!!!

That's according to a small sample of Generation Y, otherwise known as the avocado-munching Millennials for whom I have nothing but the utmost respect on account of the fact that avo and feta smash is delicious on sourdough toast, and Gen Z.

My eldest only recently told me that my texts had an angry undertone to them due to my overuse of punctuation.

"I think you're angry with me when your texts are full of question marks and have a questionable amount of full points," she says, out of the blue.

"Oh!" I exclaim, calmly but with an exclamation mark all the same.

"I write mundane texts, bordering on boring, because I want them to be clear, concise and not misunderstood.

"If I was angry, I'd never express that to you in a text.

"Never!!!

"You'd only know about it later when I could talk to you, face-to-face."

Anyhow, I was completely caught off guard by this out of left field affront to my texting style.

While I already knew to avoid upper case-shouty words in text messages, I had not even considered the collateral damage of my commas and semi-colons; it's true I'm more than a big fan of the semi-colon even in a text.

MORE MATERIAL GIRL:

"It's not that I'm angry," I say.

"It's because I'm a writer, a student of English literature, a journalist, a bookworm and a grammar geek."

"Well," she says, "You sound angry when you text!"

"WELL, I'M NOT!!" I say, angrily.

I'm not even sure how to compose a text without using grammar.

How do you separate the sentences without any full points?

i refuse to start a sentence with a lower case letter. it looks silly. see what I did there?

(That takes all of my willpower and some to leave the above sentence like that!)

When I seek guidance on the above grammatical quandaries, I'm told my texts are way too long.

I pride myself on word economy - both in the written and spoken forms - so that surely can't be right.

"Wrong!" My 10-year-old chimes in now for the first time in this already, out-of-hand debate.

"Your texts are so-so long!" she says.

"You're not writing a book, are you? Well, are you?!!"

(For the record, my texts are on average two to four sentences in length.)

I'm not writing a novel but if I was it would feature a liberal use of punctuation scattered throughout!!!?%$##@@

Speaking of symbols, I'm a latecomer to emojis but I have more than made up for lost time.

Fun fact: The top 10 used emoji on Twitter in April 2020 (one month after the global pandemic got real, social-distancing set in and texting between friends and foes climbed through the roof) were the face with tears of joy, loudly crying face, pleading face, rolling on the floor laughing, red heart, sparkles, smiling face with heart eyes, folded hands, smiling face with smiling eyes and smiling face with hearts.

My preferred icons for texting (never Twitter posts) are the crying-laughing face, blushing-thank you face, folded hands, winking face, clinking champagne glasses, the avocado and the Danish flag.

Let's just say I'm an open book.

And if a picture is worth 1000 words, maybe it's simpler to save our sentences and misconstrued punctuation for when it's really warranted in a text.

Yesterday I sent my daughter an avocado emoji.

"WHAT!!!????" she replies.

"Oh!" I text, "You sound angry."

"That's a lot of punctuation."

"No," she replies.

"It just doesn't make any sense."

Apparently on the Snapchat app, the avocado means the other person is the better half!

It's got nothing to do with the fruit that's smashing on sourdough. Who knew?!

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: