News headlines rarely offend me. I’ve gotten over that. If an article attacks my political, social or ethical viewpoint, meh, big deal. Everyone has the right to an opinion.

But I do have a hot button and the Washington Post pushed it with: “Stop. Using. Periods. Period.”

Hu-wha?

Stop using the period? The Period? The period is a standard, one-size-fits-all sentence stopper. It tells the reader my statement, or indirect question, is over. It tells the reader I’m not asking a question (there’s another big, friendly fellow for that). Why so much hate for my pal the period?

Apparently young people don’t use them anymore.

Early writing was generally meant for the person who wrote it, so punctuation wasn’t all that important. The Greeks didn’t even put spaces between words. Everything ran together in one long sentence, like a line of thought from a kindergarten class. What’sthiscolorwhat’syournameIhaveacat.

This laissez-faire attitude about punctuation was understandable. Most people couldn’t read.

Then, in the 15^th Century, Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press. For the first time the printed word became available to the masses (at least in Europe. The Chinese had developed the movable type printing press around 868 A.D.).

This outflow of reading material brought with it standardization in spelling and punctuation. Thank you, Johannes Gutenberg.

Which brings us to today. Young people text. Young people send instant messages. Young people have grown up in a world where they don’t have to talk with anyone to get their point across. This has done two things:

• Seriously annoyed me.
• Changed the way young people use language.

They talk in “textese,” which is the code word for “gibberish.” For example, “*$” means “Starbucks.” What? “NIFOC” means “nude in front of the computer.” That’s common enough it has its own abbreviation? And “KK” means “OK.” Which I assume must make some sort of sense to people too lazy to move their finger to the “O” key.

Young people also have new rules for punctuation.

If someone doesn’t use an exclamation point in a message, they’re angry. If someone uses a period, they’re angry. If someone uses a comma, semi-colon, or em dash they must be an NSA agent. Drop your phone in the pool and go hide at *$.

In texting, most of the time young people simply do not use punctuation at all. To go from one sentence to another they insert a line break – like a poem

that doesn’t rhyme

or take effort to compose

or make sense

Our language evolves. I get that. If it didn’t evolve we Americans would still spell “theater” with an “re.” In the early part of the 20^th Century the word “theatre” morphed into “theater,” which actually makes sense. And don’t give me any “‘Theater’ is the building, ‘theatre’ is the art” crap. Tell that to an editor and they’ll laugh in your face and make you spell it right.

But ditching the period is silly, especially for the reason the Post article argues – that young people don’t use it anymore.

So, since the cool kids are doing something, we should all do it too. Excuse me, too

I mean, like the period is so 1439 A.D.

Madness.