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13 year old Trisha Prabhu of Naperville, IL, is a finalist in Google Science Fair 2014. Prabhu's project focuses on preventing cyber-bullying. Excerpted from her project summary statement: "Cyberbullying may result in depression, low self-esteem and in rare cases suicides in adolescent victims(12-18). Research shows that, over 50% of adolescents and teens have been bullied online and 10 to 20% experience it regularly. Research also shows that adolescents that post mean/hurtful messages may not understand the potential consequences of their actions because the pre-frontal cortex, the area of brain that controls reasoning and decision-making isn't developed until age 25. I hypothesized that if adolescents(ages 12-18) were provided an alert mechanism that suggested them to re-think their decision if they expressed willingness to post a mean/hurtful message on social media, the number of mean/hurtful messages adolescents will be willing to post would be lesser than adolescents that are not provided with such an alert mechanism. In order to check if my hypothesis was true, I created two Software systems: 1) Baseline 2) Rethink. "Rethink" system measured number of mean/hurtful messages adolescents were willing to post after being alerted to rethink, while the "Baseline" system measured the same without the alert. Results proved that adolescents were 93.43% less willing to post mean/hurtful messages using a "Rethink" system compared with "Baseline" system without alert."

This article was about the language of love and took us, the reader, through the author's love history, given her very peculiar situation. The story began with Emily Robbins, moving to Syria as a young linguist trying to assimilate herself with the Arabic language. She met a Syrian doctor of similar age that she soon fell in love with. She was a beginner Arabic speaker and Arabic was his first language. There was an obvious language barrier between the two and it was often hard to convey messages to each other. The doctor was actually quite eloquent with his writing and speaking, but Robbins butchered his messages because of her blunt and broad knowledge of the language. They soon became distant because of their inability to understand each other. A few years have passed since Robbins has returned from Syria and she is definitely more adept to Arabic. She went through her old letters from the doctor and read them, with a better background of the Arabic language. From reading his letters she finally understood the full meaning behind his messages. The doctor's notes were beautiful and evidently showed his once devoted love to her. Robbins learned that being able to give and receive language is a huge base that ultimately holds love together. Had she understood the meanings of his messages before, there would be a possibility that they could still be passionately in love with each other today.

Linguist David Crystal opines that one of the oldest forms of punctuation may be dying. The period - the full-stop signal we all learn as children, whose use stretches back at least to the Middle Ages - is gradually being felled in the barrage of instant messaging that has become synonymous with the digital age. The conspicuous omission of the period in text messages and in instant messaging on social media, Crystal says, is a product of the punctuation-free staccato sentences favored by millennials - and increasingly their elders - a trend fueled by the freewheeling style of Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

LONDON - One of the oldest forms of punctuation may be dying The period - the full-stop signal we all learn as children, whose use stretches back at least to the Middle Ages - is gradually being felled in the barrage of instant messaging that has become synonymous with the

Because text messaging is a conversation that involves a lot of back-and-forth, people add fillers as a way to mimic spoken language. We see this with the increased use of ellipses, which can invite the recipient to continue the conversation. The period is the opposite of that - a definitive stop that signals, as linguistics professor Mark Liberman has explained, "This is final, this is the end of the discussion." For some, this can appear angry or standoffish--but why? The use of the period is an example of what linguist John Gumperz termed situational code-switching: when we change how we talk depending on where we are, who we're talking to or how we're communicating. Using a period in a text message is perceived as overly formal, making the writer come across as insincere or awkward, just like using formal spoken language in a casual setting, like a bar.

That's because lol and lmao have evolved, and are now predominantly used as tone indicators, explains John Kelly, the Associate Director of Content and Education at Dictionary.com. As we increasingly spend our lives online and communicate largely through digital messages, the paralinguistic functions we use IRL to convey emotion, tone and nuance - i.e. body language, gesturing, facial expressions - gets lost in our texts, emails, Slack messages and tweets. So we have to rely on different things to do that, like emojis and text acronyms. So what are we trying to communicate when we sign off our text messages with a lol? It's not because we're literally laughing out loud; rather, we're using this lowly little acronym to try and soften the tone of our messages.

Brief history on how it SMS text messaging came about, and why it is useful.

This article provides information about the motivation, means, and methods of text messaging in young adults (11-21 years old).

Twitter is awash with trolls, spammers and misanthropes, all keen to ruin your day with a mean-spirited message or even a threat that can cause you genuine fear. It seems all too easy to set up an account and cause trouble anonymously, but an emerging field of research is making it easier to track perpetrators by looking at the way they use language when they chat.

All the technology in the world can't stop you from leaving a trail behind you when you broadcast your thoughts online or via text message. We all have individual writing styles and habits that build to create a linguistic identity. Forensic linguistic experts can penetrate technological anonymity by interrogating the linguistic clues that you leave as you write. Everything from the way someone uses capitalisation or personal pronouns, to the words someone typically omits or includes, to a breakdown of average word or sentence length, can help identify the writer of even a short text like a Tweet or text message.

Today's kids have more ways to stay connected than ever before. They are texting, instant messaging, direct messaging, texting while direct messaging, all conveniently through their phones. Although parents may think all this time their kids spend on their phones is unhealthy, in some aspects its quite the opposite.

This article examines the decline of punctuation in today's messaging world. Internet language has become its own, separate language with its own grammar and vocabulary. In internet language, messages are shortened and punctuation is rarely used. When punctuation is used, the recipient reads into the message. Punctuation, like emojis, is used to express emotions not to mark the end of a thought.

Both metaphor and grammar influence how people think about political candidates and elections. voters' attitudes can be influenced by a number of factors, including which information the media chooses to emphasize and how it is slanted. Framing, how a message is worded to encourage particular interpretations and inferences, can influence the perception of political candidates. Negative framing is often used to make opposing candidates seem weak, immoral and incompetent. It is persuasive because it captures attention and creates anxiety about future consequences. Grammar, though seemingly innocuous, also encodes meaning and is linked to mental experience and physical interactions with the world. Information framed with past progressive caused people to reflect more on the action details in a given time period than did information framed with simple past. Using grammatical aspect to frame campaign information, positive or negative, appears to be an effective tool for influencing how people perceive candidates' past actions. It may also be tweaked to invite inferences about what candidates will do in the future because it influences inferences about how events transpire.

In this study, we address the communication technologies individuals within romantic relationships are using to communicate with one another, the frequency of use, and the association between the use of these technologies and couple's positive and negative communication.Participants consisted of individuals involved in a serious, committed, heterosexual relationship. The Relationship Evaluation Questionnaire instrument was used to assess a variety of relationship variables. The majority of individuals within the study frequently used cell phones and text messaging to communicate with their partner, with ' ' expressing affection ' ' being the most common reason for contact. Younger individuals reported using all forms of media (except for e-mail) more frequently than older participants. Relationship satisfaction did not predict specific use of media but predicted several reasons for media use. Additional analyses revealed that text messaging had the strongest association with individuals ' positive and negative communication within their relationships. Specifically, text messaging to express affection, broach potentially confrontational subjects, and to hurt partners were associated with individuals' view of positive and negative communication within their relationship. Implications of the results are discussed.

Alexia LaFata in Culture Texting is the biggest catch-22 of our time. We love it for its convenience and fun Emojis, but we probably don't notice just how much it's making us feel like sh*t. Everybody loves the feeling of the little red (1) on the screen, but what about when you're waiting for an answer that never comes?

Because each individual and gender values and perceives sending and receiving text messages unequally, it is often difficult to assume the intent of a person's text message. Due to assumptions, social normality conditions, and the expectations people have on each other, the objective of a person's message can get lost in the receiver's translation and perception of the text.

Nonverbal Messages: Cracking the Code Excerpt taken from Introduction (pp. ix - xiv) November 2, 2016 "What motivated me to spend fifty years investigating facial expressions, gestures, emotion and lies? Why these topics, which had been abandoned as fruitless by the academic establishment?...

This article talked about how our language has changed recently because of the internet. The purpose of texting is to send short, efficient messages, so our language has reflected that. We now use more acronyms and speak informally when we are talking to people online. An example of how language has changed is our use of periods. Since we speak less formally, we don't use periods as often. So now, when we receive messages that come with periods we interpret them as passive-aggressive. This can be problematic because the age people joined the internet plays a big role in how we interpret messages online. So there is often lots of miscommunication between people of different ages because we interpret language differently.

While we may be punctuating less as a whole (a recent study found that only 39 percent of college students punctuate the end of texts and 45 percent the end of instant messages), the punctuation we do use is more likely to be scrutinized. "Digital punctuation can carry more weight than traditional writing because it ends up conveying tone, rhythm and attitude rather than grammatical structure," said Ben Zimmer, a linguist and the executive editor of Vocabulary.com. "It can make even a lowly period become freighted with special significance."

The correct use of punctuation can really improve someone's opinion of you. The author of this piece decided to go out with someone based on their use of punctuation in a text message. The author also discusses how we have been conditioned to read certain punctuation marks and how they correlate to tone of voice in the text message. Punctuation marks are an important aspect of language that can help convey a meaning in a text.

How many times have your teachers or editors told you that every word counts? Now, it turns out that every character you send counts, too. In fact, it turns out that the best way to punctuate a text message may be by not punctuating it at all: Researchers at Binghampton University have found that ending your text with a period - full stop - may make you seem more insincere.

The author of this article discusses the study she conducted that explored how punctuation is used in texts to convey tone. The participants in the study consisted of 122 college-aged students (mostly from Boston College), and they were surveyed to gather data and responses. The discussion of the study shows trends in how text messages are interpreted and how subtle changes in text punctuation can alter the meaning or tone of the message.

You do not want to talk to me on the phone. How do I know? Because I don't want to talk to you on the phone. Nothing personal, I just can't stand the thing. I find it intrusive and somehow presumptuous. It sounds off insolently whenever it chooses and expects me to drop whatever I'm doing and, well, engage.