Boo.
How do you end your text messages? Smiley face emoji? Exclamation mark? Nothing at all? Well, then you're fine - but if you end it on a full stop, you're doing it all wrong.
According to a study by Binghamton University, those who send text messages that end in a full stop are perceived as being less sincere, confirming everything we already thought about those dreaded full-stoppers.
Source: giphy
The study, which was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, involved researches presenting 126 undergraduates with a series of exchanges which were either text messages or handwritten notes.
The messages featured invitations followed by brief replies - and when the reply was followed by a full stop, the undergraduates rated it as less sincere than when no punctuation at all was used.
Even the much-hated exclamation mark was seen as more sincere than the abhorred full stop.
'Texting is lacking many of the social cues used in actual face-to-face conversations,' said lead researcher Celia Klin in a statement.
'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.'
Do you use full-stops? Will you carry on using them now? Let us know @marieclaireuk
