The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Commonsense rules for the text-challenged
Our default mode of communication has undergone changes.
Lizzie Post once sent a text message checking in on a friend with a new baby. The response came late — a full year later.
Would her great-great-grandmother, the prolific writer and titan of American etiquette Emily Post, be horrified? The younger Post says she doesn’t think so.
“I feel like her personality would have been one where if you weren’t offended by the disconnection, then of course you would welcome the reconnection,” the younger Post said. “If the disconnection offended you, then either don’t respond or let someone know it was a problem. Either take ownership of it or let it go.”
Throughout her career spanning the first half of the 20th century, Emily Post adjusted her etiquette advice to reflect a changing society, says the younger Post, who co-wrote the 19th and soonto-come 20th editions of elder Post’s seminal book “Emily Post’s Etiquette.” And that approach may be the only hope we have to make sense of texting, the asynchronous phone messages that now prop up much of our social and professional lives.
Agreed-upon rules for how to text appropriately have imploded amid a global pandemic, the proliferation of social media apps
the breakdown of work-life boundaries. Search Twitter for “texting etiquette” and you’ll find a range of contradictory complaints — is it rude to let a text sit or rude to expect a response? Is the thumbs-up emoji passive-aggressive? Does an all-caps message demand an all-caps response? Generational differences make things even harder, as teens progress from literal to ironic emoji use while our aunts continue to reply “OK.”
Texting has become our default mode of communication, says Justin Santamaria, who led the development of Apple’s texting service imessage back in the early 2010s. What mayonce have been a letter, voicemail, phone call or email now often arrives in a text — and that collapse of contexts makes it tough to know which rules to follow.
Wondering what texting wisdom has survived the past few years? Here’s what the experts told us.
Think of group texts like a dinner party: Michelle Markowitz, co-author of “Hey Ladies! The Story of 8 Best Friends, 1 Year, and Way, Way Too Many Emails,” a book about off-the-rails group messages, said she’s tossed aside plenty of traditional texting wisdom. The “this should have been a phone call” thinking is over.
But some texting manners are here to stay, especially when it comes to group chats. Markowitz and her co-author, Caroline Moss, mine the many ways group communication goes awry. Group texts spawn hundreds of notifications, they’re often filled with strangers, and those threads never go away.
You wouldn’t invite a bunch of friends to your house and not introduce them, so don’t do that in a group text, either, Markowitz said. Take a moment at the top to let everyone say their names and clarify how they know each other.
If you need to iron something out with a particular group member, start a new text conversation instead of making everyone read your back-and-forth.
We’re done fighting over capital letters and punctuation:
Sorry, sticklers — this ship has sailed.
A good text makes sense to its recipient, but that shouldn’t require consulting an SAT grammar workbook, Markowitz noted. After years of reduced social contact, she’s happy when someone reaches out, even if their style of texting is totally different from hers. Skipping the capitalization or leaving off a question mark doesn’t denote a lack of respect.
Millennials and Gen-zers aren’t exempt here. It’s time we embrace the dreaded Gen-x ellipses ... even if it makes our anxiety spike.
Responses aren’t mandatory, but acknowledgments are nice: The past few years have been hard, and a growing chunk of text responses begin with “sorry for the delay,” Post said. Keep in mind that plenty of texts get lost to busyness or brain fog, and if you really need an answer, send a kind follow-up.
On the other hand, keep in mind that unanswered texts make some people feel worried, Post added. A short note letting them know you saw their message and will respond when you have time can alleviate some text-related suffering.
Don’t be a texting wet blanket: Striking some particular tone is less important than matching your conversation partner’s energy.
Plenty of us have poured our hearts out over a text to get “ok” in response. Repeatedly sending short responses like thumbs up, “lol” or “k” might be fine if your recipient does the same, Post said, but it’s “immature” if you’re failing to hold up your end of the conversation. Texting isn’t Morse code — the goal is not to use as few words as possible.
It’s OK to get serious: Delivering bad news — like a breakup or someone’s death — over text is verboten, Post said.
But limiting text conversations to logistics and basic greetings is outdated. We’ve come to rely on texting in so many contexts, Santamaria said, that it’s natural we’ll end up talking about our emotions. Sometimes he finds it easier to say serious things over text because he has more time to think.