Connecting with people has become so much easier with advancing technology. Tasks that once required a postage stamp or carrier pigeon are now as simple as tapping a name or even a face on your screen, and you’re connected. But also easier is unconsciously getting caught up in a dilemma by violating certain new rules for communicating. A big one for some: Don’t call until you’ve texted to confirm it’s OK to call. But that’s just the beginning.

“I’m usually pretty mild and not much bothers me,” said Mark Angielle, a 29-year-old office manager from White Plains, New York. But the one thing that he hates more than anything else in life is the terrible one-word message — “K.” “At the very least reply with, Got it.” he said “At least give me a few words here. You’re not that busy.”

There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of others who have taken Lo social media to express their distaste for people who don’t follow the unwritten rules of digital communication.

“These rules are simply a new display of a phenomenon we’ve seen in the past,” said James Ivory, professor of communication a Virginia Tech. In the same way that generations and small groups of friends have their own slang and customs, internet culture has given birth to technology-dependent beings that have their own unique set of routine.

But not everyone gets the point. Unlike language, digital communication can be filled with ambiguous clues (线索、迹象) that the person on the other end of the call, text or email may or may not easily understand.

“As soon as people aren’t talking face to face, the first thing that gets lost is some of the richness of the body language,” Ivory said, “People immediately fill that gap by using emoji (表情符号) to sum up a feeling in seconds.

“There's great potential for danger,” Ivory warned. “What's considered polite in one form might be inappropriate or rude in another occasion.”

You are out with a few friends after a long day at the office. You are so relieved to be able to speak freely at last, with as much slang (俚语) as you like. Then another friend joins your group, contributing humorless and grammatically perfect sentences to the conversation. Are you at ease?

If you can imagine yourself in this situation, you can understand how a lot of young people feel when they receive a text with a big period (句号).

For the younger generation, using proper punctuation (标点) in an informal context like texting can give an impression of formality that borders on rudeness. The message-ending period establishes a certain distance. The punctuation is polite when you are speaking to someone older than you or above you at work, but unpleasant among friends. To put it simply, including a formality in informal communication makes people uncomfortable.

Think of a mother using her son’s full name when issuing a serious ultimatum (最后通牒). Or of an upset lover speaking to a partner in a cool, professional tone. People gain and express interpersonal comfort through unpolished self-presentation, and acting (or writing) too formally comes off as cold or distant.

It is also worth noting that more of our informal communication is digital now than ever before, so texting etiquette (礼仪) carries at least as much weight as speaking tone. It is generally accepted that many texters, especially young people, see end-of-message periods as unnecessary. It is clear that a message has ended regardless of its punctuation, because each message is in its own bubble. Thus, the message break has become the default (默认) full-stop.

This pressure to get one’s thoughts across increases when they are aware that the people that they are texting know they are typing—as with speech, both parties in the conversation are responsible for maintaining it To avoid keeping their friends waiting anxiously, therefore, texters send out single, often unpunctuated phrases rather than full sentences.

Adapting to this new custom may be difficult for older texters. However, this is not the first time that writers have repurposed standard punctuation. The new customs surrounding the period are just one episode in a centuries-long history of grammatical exploration.

Can you imagine there being a community where boys and girls growing up together can finally speak different languages? In Ubang Nigeria, it really happens. It’s not exactly clear what percentage of the words in the men’s and women’s languages are different, but there are enough examples to make sentences sound different when spoken by the opposite sex. For “clothing”, men use the word “nki”, while women say “ariga”; “kitchi” means tree for men, while women say “okweng”. These are not just some slight pronunciation differences, but totally different words. “It’s almost like two different lexicons (词汇集),” a language expert, Chi Chi Undle said. “There are a lot of words that men and women share in common, but there are others which are totally different depending on your sex. They don’t sound alike, and don’t have the same letters. They are completely different words.”

Interestingly, both men and women are able to understand each other perfectly in Ubang, as both boys and girls grow up around their parents and get to learn both languages, but by the age of 10, boys are expected to speak in the male tongue. It seems that there is a stage the male will reach and he discovers he is not using the rightful language. When he starts speaking the men’s language, you know the maturity is coming into him.

No one really knows how or why the double-language tradition of Ubang began. Chi Chi Undie believes the two languages are the result of a “double-sex culture” where men and women operate in two separate spheres (范围) and live in separate worlds that rarely come together. However, she admits this is a weak theory, as the double-sex culture is present in many parts of Africa, where there are no different languages for men and women.

Today, with English words constantly entering the lexicon of young Nigerians, Ubang’s two languages are in danger of being lost forever. Worse still, neither the male nor female language is written down, so they both rely on young people passing them down to the next generation.