Is generational punctuation still a thing?
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Apparently so, though it's continuing to evolve. Reviewing Florence Hazrat's forthcoming book On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World, Judith Shulevitz focuses on the current generational and contextual differences in English punctuation ("Punctuation: A generational divide", The Atlantic 7/14/2026).
There was a flurry of attention to such things a couple of decades ago:
"The new semiotics of punctuation", 11/7/2012
"Agressive periods and the popularity of lingusitics", 11/26/2013
"Generational punctuation differences again", 8/1/2014
"Query: Punctuation in personal digital media", 2/23/2015
What I've seen about it more recently, or at least noticed, is a bit off to the side:
"Prosodic punctuation", 12/19/2017
"More on grammar, punctuation, and prosody", 12/19/2017
"Barstool punctuation", 4/4/2020
"Cumulative punctuation", 4/15/2020
"2020 punctuation/prosody", 9/19/2020
"Punctuation marks hanging out", 4/8/2025
"Death by punctuation", 6/3/2026
I haven't seen any discussions of punctuational innovations in other languages/orthographies, like Chinese or Korean, though this might be because it's not happening?
Jerry Packard said,
July 19, 2026 @ 11:59 am
About the only punctuation difference I can think of between English and Chinese is the ‘enumeration comma’ (、), in examples like apples、pears and oranges, and I don’t see any of the innovations mentioned above.
Chas Belov said,
July 19, 2026 @ 5:22 pm
The Chinese period is vertically and horizontally centered as well.
CJK Symbols and Punctuation occupies Unicode code points U+3000 through U+303F. There's quite a variety of period, comma, and brackets as well as the delightful U+3020 〠 Postal Mark Face.
Jonathan Smith said,
July 19, 2026 @ 9:10 pm
To be fair punctuation is only 100 years or so new in Chinese languages (etc.) to begin with. There's an early 20th cent. POJ text that lists a dozen ish marks (some dated) and attempts to describe their use… readers must have thought "what in gods name is all this nonsense?" Editors of modern editions are known to make notes to the effect of "'?!': retained as is from original, trust us"; "'———': this weird symbol was used quite a bit in early POJ, who knows why", etc. etc.
Philip Taylor said,
July 20, 2026 @ 1:00 pm
How today’s SMS users do, or do not, punctuate their text is of little or no interest to me, but I have to confess that I make far more use of trailing ellipses than I did in the past; in today’s interactions with ChatGPT, for example, I suspect that I have used in excess of a dozen and quite possibly more than two dozen. I do not know when this trend in my punctuation habits changed, but a quick search on the oldest of my e-mail "Sent" folders that I can quickly locate confirms that I was using them as early as 2004 :
Philip Taylor said,
July 20, 2026 @ 1:01 pm
How today’s SMS users do, or do not, punctuate their text is of little or no interest to me, but I have to confess that I make far more use of trailing ellipses than I did in the past; in today’s interactions with ChatGPT, for example, I suspect that I have used in excess of a dozen and quite possibly more than two dozen. I do not know when this trend in my punctuation habits changed, but a quick search on the oldest of my e-mail "Sent" folders that I can quickly locate confirms that I was using them as early as 2004 :
Cedar said,
July 20, 2026 @ 6:44 pm
I do find that in corporate instant messaging chats that are somewhat informal to begin with, I tend to often intentionally abide by the "no period after the final sentence in a multi-sentence or multi-message output by me.
Ironically, the lack of the period is somewhat of an indicator that it is my final sentence for that set of thoughts!
Indeed, the lack of punctuation somewhat signals "this is kind of informal, even though I'm using pretty correct grammar and so forth. We are cool here." (Wow, how embarrassing?)
This matches the 2012/2013 angry period & semiotics articles.
In the same kind of comms, I always edit the messages to eventually correct any typos I inevitably discover from the quick discussion that is happening. I assume that any readers might be scrolling back later would benefit from at least reading corrected words and grammar (final punctuation excepted). Or at least I want it to be presentable, should such an occasion arise.
I also know notice that I make loads more typos than I ever used to. Maybe because text moves so fast these days, and LLMs can just handle it?
wgj said,
July 22, 2026 @ 1:33 am
I can attest to two generational trends in Mainland China: One is towards replacing comma and (to a lesser degree) period with a single space. This is widespread in instant messages, online comments, and other short texts. It is also the official standard for subtitles on television (both news and entertainment), which may actually predate the online trend. So when Xi Jinping gives a speech, the official text version will use commas and periods, but the news reporting of the speech will have subtitle that replaces them with spaces.
The other trend is replacing Chinese (full-width) punctuations with English (half-width) ones. This is widespread in short online writings, as well as many websites and mobile apps, but unlike the previous trend, there is no part of the official party-state that has adopted this practice. The main reason websites and apps do this – ubiquitously in labels, often in titles, and less so in running text – is purely practical: half-width punctiations save (screen) space.
Jonathan Smith said,
July 22, 2026 @ 8:15 pm
Inspired by WGJ to think more, there is also message final "~" / "~~". Reddit explains "这是一种把声音拖长来显得可爱的表达方式" (= exaggerated trailing-off for cuteness) with replies pointing out the problem to which this could be seen as a solution namely "很好啊啊啊啊啊 真的好奇怪" (= repeated "啊" [etc.] is weird [because it seems like you're going a-a-a-a… not aaaaaa…])
wgj said,
July 26, 2026 @ 8:40 am
@Jonathan: And inspired by your response in return, I'd like to add the proliferation of the middle point in Mainland China today, as in "中国 • 北京" instead of simply 中国北京, or "富强 • 民主 • 文明 • 和谐" instead of 富强、民主、文明、和谐.
The latter use has become so widespread, especially in titles (as opposed to running text), that the latest version of the official standard General Rules for Punctuation (GB/T 15834-2011) actually lists it as an acceptable usage:
4.14 间隔号
4.14.3.4 用在构成标题或栏目名称的并列词语之间。
示例：《天·地·人》
The former use, on the other hand, remains non-standard (and utterly unnecessary).
Jonathan Smith said,
August 2, 2026 @ 12:02 am
Ah interesting, I think of this mainly in relation to separating transcribed "foreign" names into components a la 約翰・史密斯. Or maybe this particular convention is one that's fading a bit at least in PRC publishing…
cadaeic said,
August 2, 2026 @ 5:17 pm
@Jonathan
The tilde in Chinese is influenced by Japanese usage. The nyoro ~ serves to extend the sound like you said, but unlike a straight dash the shape suggests an undulating tone that sounds more playful or cutesy. Compare: oh– and ooh~~
To add my own contribution to the subject, in Chinese the brackets are now used by themselves at the end of a sentence to convey a tongue-in-cheek tone. It evolved from the practice of adding a bracketed word to get your tone across on the internet. Consider the following:
(1) Isn't that just great? (/s)
(2) Isn't that just great? ()
(3) Isn't that just great? (
Due to the extra ambiguity (2) and (3) come off as cheekier than (1).