125

What is it about the text messages and emails sent by older people that make me feel like I'm having a stroke?

Maybe they're used to various shortcuts in their writing that they picked up before autocorrect became common, but these habits are too idiosyncratic for autocorrect to handle properly. However, that doesn't explain the emails I've had to decipher that were typed on desktop keyboards. Has anyone else younger than 45 or so felt similarly frustrated with geriatrics' messages?

@asklemmy

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 67 points 5 months ago

Gonna need some examples methinks. But the tendency to overuse ellipses is right tf up there

[-] herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 46 points 5 months ago

Yes! This is what I always associate with older folks texting or emailing. I use ellipses a fair bit for (my attempts at) comedic effect. Some older folks are using them on a whole different level, having this weird habit of ending sentences with them where most people would use a period or exclamation point. It can come off sounding very ominous.

"Bill is coming over."

Okay, cool. Have fun with Bill.

"Bill is coming over ..."

Grandpa, are you in trouble? What's Bill going to do???

[-] Today@lemmy.world 33 points 5 months ago

I'm old and i use ellipses frequently, but my family would understand that i mean -

Bill is coming over and you know i hate that fucker so please call or stop by to save me if you don't hear from me in a bit.

I think your Grandpa is expecting you to infer something from the ...

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 26 points 5 months ago

I think your Grandpa is expecting you to infer something from the ...

"What's the matter?"

Nothing, just letting you know...

"Do you want me to come over?"

No, Bill is coming already...

"Oh, great! And?"

Just letting you know...

"Oh, ok. Have fun, then. Tell Bill I said hi!"

Will do...if I remember.....

[-] random_character_a@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago

I'm old and I use ... to indicate that I'm gonna continue that sentence, but because I'm slow to write, I give you a chance to participate/continue. Especially if the sentence is going to be long.

Bill is coming over...

Well that nice.

...but I can't stand the fucker.

Oh.

[-] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 11 points 5 months ago

...from the what ??! say it, goddammit !

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] pelletbucket@lemm.ee 18 points 5 months ago

I saw some video where they explained boomers use the ellipses to indicate missing words? like they're acknowledging that it's a sentence fragment and not a complete sentence.

[-] sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago

That kinda makes sense because that is the how it is intended to be used (from a punctuation perspective).

el·lip·sis noun the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues.

[-] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

Hmm, I'd always understood ellipses to mean a thought was trailing off, or as a written indicator of someone thinking as if taking a pause while speaking.

I was never taught that's what it means, just seems that's how most people use it.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[-] onlooker@lemmy.ml 19 points 5 months ago

The thing with ellipses is... they make you sound... like you have lethargy... Either that... or extreme shyness... Whenever I see text with no other punctuation than ellipses...I always imagine... like I'm talking with Eeyore... from Winnie the Pooh...

[-] davad@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago

What if I like ellipses...

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 11 points 5 months ago
[-] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 8 points 5 months ago
[-] boatswain@infosec.pub 9 points 5 months ago

The related thing that I've seen a few times and never understood is ",,,". What does an ellipsis of commas even mean?

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] macrocarpa@lemmy.world 49 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Younger than 45

Oh OK that actually makes sense.

45 year olds and above are digital immigrants. In short, they had an off-line childhood and an online adulthood. They have different speech and writing patterns to you because they learnt and communicated in a different way to you.

Assuming you're under 45, this won't make sense, because you've never experienced a world which doesn't have this sort of interaction. You're a digital native, digital tech has always been there.

In twenty years time, children born or educated after the advent of chat gpt will have the same problem understanding you. The way you write, post and interact will seem clunky and old fashioned. It's already happening - we're having to adapt the way we interact, in order to be able to 'be understood' by AI.

The wonderful thing about humanity, tho, is that we do adapt and adopt! Consider this - everyone over the age of 50 had to learn something completely new to them in order to be able to communicate with you via email, sms or messaging app. They used to just talk, or write letters. Sharing media was a physical act. Yet here they are using the same texh as you. Awesome.

[-] Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee 27 points 5 months ago

Take into account that those 45 and older were the ones with disposable income when the internet took off

We fuckin invented the digital world, and memes too!

[-] retrieval4558@mander.xyz 11 points 5 months ago

Not sure who the "we" is in your post but Imo the biggest influence on meme culture was 4chan and similar dumpster fire communities of the early/adolescent Internet.

[-] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 14 points 5 months ago

Yes and were in our 40s now. Those teenagers grew up, at least chronologically.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] emptiestplace@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 months ago

Your timeline is straight up fucked. In short, you don't know what you're talking about.

[-] enbyecho@lemmy.world 37 points 5 months ago

Has anyone else younger than 45 or so felt similarly frustrated with geriatrics’ messages?

What always makes me laugh about posts like this is the knowledge that soon you too will hit that terrible 45 and become "geriatric". Your text messages and emails (how quaint) will suddenly become incomprehensible and everyone will claim you are giving them a stroke just by existing .

The clock is ticking... faster than you think.

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 10 points 5 months ago

That's an incredibly bad faith reading.

Anyone younger than 45 is going to have greater digital exposure and be more adept at electronic communication. The older you are, the less likely you are to be frustrated with how geriatrics communicate because the more familiar pre-digital communication styles will be to you.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[-] AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca 31 points 5 months ago

All of my kids messages are super short or emoji filled, my wife, friends and older contacts all text to text me full paragraphs or sentences.

Need some examples

[-] tehmics@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

Sounds like you're a millennial with gen alpha kids. The latest generation is struggling to read and write, while millennials are the best typists

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 21 points 5 months ago

In my experience, younger people who grew up with the internet write their texts and emails as if they are instant messaging, because they grew up with AOL and MSN messenger etc when it comes to text based communication.

Older people who communicated over text before the internet only did this in one way - writing letters.

As a result their style of texting or emailing is often very long form in comparison.

When writing letters you are limited by how much room there is on a piece of paper.

This leads to using some shorthand which used to be fairly common, but has fallen out of public knowledge for younger people.

You could argue that some of the stuff that younger people email or text informally can be just as cryptic because there is entirely different shorthand that millenials and generations Y and Z use.

If you closely examine how you casually communicate with your peers of a similar age, you will notice it can be just as odd as what you experience from communicating with generations on either side of you.

[-] A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 9 points 5 months ago

Young people grew up with MSN and AOL... since when young is 40yos.

[-] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm over a decade away from 40 and I grew up with it.

Furthermore the context of the use of younger is in:

"In my experience, younger people who grew up with the internet write their texts and emails as if they are instant messaging, because they grew up with AOL and MSN messenger etc when it comes to text based communication."

Which is replying to a post titled:

"What is it about the text messages and emails sent by older people that make me feel like I'm having a stroke?"

The use of "Younger" here is not an absolute term, it is a relative term, meaning it refers to people younger than the older people the original poster is referring to, who are in my estimation likely to be anyone under the age of 60 based on what OP describes and my informed experiences having worked in the IT industry supporting users of all ages.

[-] originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee 19 points 5 months ago

And why do old people randomly capitalize nouns? Every Sentence reads like the just read the Written Word for the first time and wanted to give It a Try For Themselves

[-] paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works 16 points 5 months ago

My Android keyboard will automatically capitalize lots of common words like target, guess, even-- shit it's not doing it now, it heard me thinking. I guess it's brands, but some of them I don't recognize. I'm going to be mad if it starts doing it again as soon as I leave this thread.

[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 8 points 5 months ago

My phone insists on Land. Wtf, phone?

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] bamfic@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

In 18th century English they did the same Thing. German too. Nouns were more important

[-] jimmux@programming.dev 11 points 5 months ago

This is the accepted writing style at my work, and it's been driving me nuts for years. I'm talking about the copy we put on all our public facing materials. Even our resident linguists hate it, but apparently someone high up thinks it's industry standard.

Remembering this just made me happier to be leaving soon. They're so resistant to challenging entrenched habits. I should have seen these signs when I started.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 months ago

I'm not as old as OP mentioned, but sometimes I'll do it when it's a word that's commonly abbreviated or part of a title. Like "Original Poster".

I've had a couple people ask me if I'm German, but no, I just like some of their ideas on capitalization.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

And why do old people randomly capitalize nouns?

I'll admit it's a weird Habit.

Edit: Nouned.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] DirigibleProtein@aussie.zone 17 points 5 months ago

My mother would mistype and just accept whatever word was substituted in the autocorrect. So I’d receive messages like “what’s times area your striving art under Stevens’s on Saturdays”. Then I’d have to ring her, on the off chance she answered (only turned the phone on when expecting a call), so there wasn’t any point texting in the first place.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] newtraditionalists@beehaw.org 15 points 5 months ago

It's about as annoying as young people abandoning any and all punctuation entirely. The amount of people that will write an entire paragraph and not use a single period is obscene. If you can't bother to organize your thoughts in the most minimal way, I'm going to assume you have nothing of worth to say and just won't read it. And frankly, if what you're saying is so boiler plate you don't need punctuation, then you really don't have anything to add, so probably just shouldn't.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] kuneho@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago

Punctuation

[-] MissJinx@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago

Never been called geriatrics before. I can retire now! Nice

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] DreamAccountant@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago

"Couldn't reply to message on Lemmy, was written like it was typed on a keyboard. Literally can't right now. Too many words."

What an asshole.

[-] RBWells@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago

What? Who are you communicating with, and what shortcuts are you talking about? I text with my kids and they use more shortcuts and abbreviations than I do.

In work emails, I try to think of the recipient when writing them. Some people are chattier and prefer a nice introduction and thorough explanation, but my boss likes to just see messages like:

Posted on 13-May, thanks.

So if that's what you are talking about maybe you just have a more social communication style.

Though I will say my husband uses the ominous ellipses too often, like...

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

Not exclusive to old people, unfortunately. I've seen many instances of texts from decidedly young people that make me question if the language being used was some derivative of Old English.

But to answer the question specifically, I generally find that old people have a higher tendency to type or use speech-to-text and then not check for accuracy. It makes it generally pretty common for autocorrect to completely mess up meaning of the message. Also older people seem to either spam or avoid punctuation entirely with no in between.

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Assuming you're under 45, this won't make sense, because you've never experienced a world

Nah. 45 is '78/'79. You can easily run up to '85 on the analogue migration

[-] Kory@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 months ago

45+ is "older people" to you?

[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 12 points 5 months ago

In the US, the average life expectancy is 79.7 years old. Half of that is 39.87, and looking at demographics the median age is even lower.

So yes, 45 year olds are easily older than most people in the US at least. I think that's a fair statement.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] jlow@beehaw.org 8 points 5 months ago
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] NABDad@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
125 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43722 readers
1066 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS