this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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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?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago

That's actually how the comment above interpreted the ellipses. The difference is more, why the words are missing.

The "modern" interpretation is that you are too annoyed or afraid to finish the sentence. In the sense of "son of a ...." in case of annoyance.

The "old" interpretation is either temporal (I'm not finished writing) or simply an acknowledgement that the fragment is just a fragment.

So the modern reader will interpret much more context into the missing words, leading to the exchange above.