What your punctuation choices say about you

Jessica Bennett, a journalist covering gender and culture for Time and The New York Times, recently wrote about punctuation in digital communication:

There are no pauses or inflections in digital communication; we aren't speaking the words out loud. Which means that even within the tiniest spaces, punctuation fills in the tonal holes.

So even while we may be punctuating less as a whole (a recent study found that only 39 percent of college students punctuate the end of texts and 45 percent the end of instant messages), the punctuation we do use is more likely to be scrutinized.

"Digital punctuation can carry more weight than traditional writing because it ends up conveying tone, rhythm and attitude rather than grammatical structure," said Ben Zimmer, a linguist and the executive editor of Vocabulary.com. "It can make even a lowly period become freighted with special significance."

Bennett joined MPR News' Kerri Miller to talk about her piece.