Sincere Texts?

A recent study concluded that text messages without punctuation are perceived to be more sincere.

17:00 09 December 2015

A new study has revealed one simple trick that can make your text messages sound more sincere -- do not use punctuations.

 

The team at Binghamton University in New York reached the conclusion after recruiting 126 volunteers and monitoring their series of exchanges consisted of a statement followed by an invitation posed as a question.

 

Based on the responses, the messages that did not contain punctuation were described as being more sincere.

 

Celia Klin, an associate professor of psychology at Binghamton University who led the research, said: "Texting is lacking many of the social cues used in actual face-to-face conversations."

 

"When speaking, people easily convey social and emotional information with eye gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses, and so on.

 

"People obviously can't use these mechanisms when they are texting. Thus, it makes sense that texters rely on what they have available to them -- emoticons, deliberate misspellings that mimic speech sounds and, according to our data, punctuation."

 

The findings were published in the Computers in Human Behaviour journal.