隨著溝通方式日新月異的發(fā)展，很多標(biāo)點符號已經(jīng)成了古書上才能見到的活化石。9月24日是美國的“國家標(biāo)點符號日”，每到這天，人們才能想起那些已經(jīng)許久沒有用過的標(biāo)點符號，只有一個標(biāo)點符號例外——句號到目前為止尚未被打入冷宮。雖然也有人哀嘆這個圓滾滾的小符號也已行將就木，但是在可預(yù)見的將來，句號君依然會執(zhí)著地陪伴著我們。一項最新的針對手機(jī)短信（它本該是宣判了句號死刑命運的媒介）的研究能幫我們解釋這是為什么。

計算機(jī)語言學(xué)家泰勒?斯科諾貝倫最近仔細(xì)分析了他自己收藏的157,305條短消息，以得出人們對句號的使用模式。他的初步研究成果獨家發(fā)布在了《時代》周刊上。“句號實際上起到了非常有趣的作用。”

這15萬條短信包含了他在7年的時間里與1100余人通信的內(nèi)容。他注意到，在這短時期里，雖然很多發(fā)信者大大降低了句號的使用頻率，但出于很多原因，人們依然還會在手機(jī)屏幕的右下角點擊兩次，給短信劃上一個圓滾滾的句號。（斯科諾貝倫指出，當(dāng)然該研究只局限于一個人的社交圈子，或許不具有廣泛的代表性，但它也是截止目前為止規(guī)模最大的一次針對手機(jī)短信的語言學(xué)研究。）

第一個原因是結(jié)構(gòu)。我們?nèi)巳硕冀拥竭^奇長無比的短信，有的是朋友發(fā)來的八卦，有的是被劈腿的前女友發(fā)來的怨毒控訴，也有的是才高八斗的父母以標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的雅思閱讀長難句的水平給你發(fā)來一堆人生的經(jīng)驗。斯科諾貝倫發(fā)現(xiàn)，一條短信的長度越長，它以句號結(jié)束的機(jī)率越大。在長度不足17個字母的短信中，只有13%以句號結(jié)尾。而在長度超過了72個字母的短信中，則有60%以句號結(jié)尾。72個字母大約是一條微博字?jǐn)?shù)限制的一半。短信的長度越長，它就越像新聞、小說和法律文件一樣需要標(biāo)點符號，因為“人們會迷失在沒有標(biāo)點符號的文字海洋里。”同時，句子堆砌得越多，就會自然而然地產(chǎn)生前后呼應(yīng)的傾向。也就是說，如果短信很長，我們就會在中間用上幾個句號，然后我們就會強(qiáng)迫癥地在最后一句話后面再添一個句號，哪怕文本框本身就包含了“這段話就到這兒了”的意思。

斯科諾貝倫還發(fā)現(xiàn)，句號還可以是情緒的象征。以往的著述中已經(jīng)對句號的作用著墨頗多，這里不再贅述。總之，句號曾經(jīng)是個中立的符號，如水一般，不帶感情色彩。但用在手機(jī)短信里，卻可以顯得發(fā)信人很憤怒、氣惱或沒誠意。當(dāng)然，它是不可能同時傳達(dá)這么多涵義的。語言學(xué)家大衛(wèi)?克里斯托曾經(jīng)嘆道，由于新聞媒體都有能不用句號就盡量不用的習(xí)慣，甚至導(dǎo)致人們的語言習(xí)慣也發(fā)生了變化。對此他舉了一個很好的例子：

約翰來參加聚會了（陳述事實了）

約翰來參加聚會了。（我的天哪！——此處自帶小岳岳表情包）

不過句號所傳達(dá)的含義也有可能是友好的。當(dāng)一位朋友遭遇到不好的事情，句號可以傳遞你的真摯同情，它也可以表明你的情感是真誠的。句號還可以最大程度上降低給人留下粗心和語義不明的感覺的風(fēng)險。根據(jù)斯科諾貝倫的分析，以句號結(jié)尾的短信，往往大量含有“告訴”、“感覺”、“約會”、“難過”、“看起來”和“聊天”等詞。而在沒有用句號結(jié)尾的短信中，往往包含許多更為輕松的常用詞，如“哈哈”、“你”、“好”、“OK”、“就要”等等。值得注意提，像哈哈（lol）這樣的語氣詞，有時本身就充當(dāng)了標(biāo)點符號的作用，就像顏文字表情一樣。

隨著我們通過短信聯(lián)系的人越來越廣，我們不僅要發(fā)短信給自己的好友，還要發(fā)給同事、遠(yuǎn)親、公司和客戶等等，而句號等標(biāo)點符號則有助于區(qū)分語境。因為決定了一場對話是否正式的，并非是我們所使用的媒介，而是我們的談話對象。斯科諾貝倫表示：“標(biāo)點符號是正規(guī)化的一種象征。并不是每個跟你發(fā)短信的人都想跟你用大白話聊天。”

斯科諾貝倫還發(fā)現(xiàn)，句號在有一類短信中是很少出現(xiàn)的，這就是傳說中的“文愛”。這位老司機(jī)機(jī)智地指出，像“失禮了，請問我能褪去你的小褲褲么？”這樣的請求在床第之間會顯得有些出戲，所以在文愛時一本正經(jīng)地使用標(biāo)點符合估計也會有點破壞氣氛。

“國家標(biāo)點符號日”是一個為了紀(jì)念那些我們時而濫用、時而錯用、時而不用的標(biāo)點符號而設(shè)立的日子。斯科諾貝倫的研究還有一個發(fā)現(xiàn)，那就是標(biāo)點符號不僅是簡點的點線圓圈。至少從他收藏的那15萬條短信中可以發(fā)現(xiàn)，人們通常會模仿對方使用標(biāo)點符號的方式，最終對話雙方的短信寫作風(fēng)格會更加接近。也就是說，句號有助于構(gòu)建對話者之間的關(guān)系，突出團(tuán)體的身份感。

當(dāng)然，如果大家都不用標(biāo)點符號了，也有能營造出同樣的效果。但斯科諾貝倫的這份研究也表明，只要有人還在使用句號，就總會有其他人在回短信時也附上一個圓滾滾的句號。?（財富中文網(wǎng)）?

譯者：樸成奎

There are punctuation symbols that have largely gone the way of the dodo. But while National Punctuation Day, Sept. 24, may be an occasion to pour one out for the pilcrow, that’s not the case for the period. Despite much yammering about this familiar little dot being on life support, or already dead, the period is here to stay for the foreseeable future. And a new analysis of text messages—a medium that is supposedly spelling the period’s demise—helps illustrate why.

“Periods are not dead,” says computational linguist Tyler Schnoebelen, who turned to his own trove of 157,305 text messages to analyze how the final period—a period at the end of a thought or sentence—was being used and shared his initial results exclusively with TIME. “They’re actually doing interesting things.”

These were messages that he sent or received over a period of about seven years with about 1,100 other people, and while he did notice that many of those texters severely declined in their use of periods over that time, he also found that there are a lot of reasons people are still double-tapping their smartphone screens. (Schnoebelen presents the caveat that this, of course, is just one man’s social network, but it also happens to be the largest linguistic analysis of SMS texting done to date, he says.)

One reason is structure. We’ve all gotten that loooooong text from a rambling friend, or jilted lover, or parent who apparently believes there are prizes to be awarded for Most Letters Used In a Single Sitting. Schnoebelen found that the lengthier a message was, the more likely it was to end in a period. While only 13% of messages that were shorter than 17 characters (about this length) ended in a period, 60% of messages that exceeded 72 characters got the period treatment. That’s about half the length of a maxed-out tweet. Longer text messages, like news articles and novels and legal filings, need more punctuation and will continue to need it “because people would get lost without it,” as Schnoebelen puts it. And there is a natural tendency towards parallelism: If the text was long enough that we needed to use periods within it, it feels natural to plop another one on the end, even if text bubbles themselves often act as their own visual “thought stops here” indicator.

Schnoebelen also found that a period can be a signal of emotion. There has been much ink spilled about how the period, once neutral as water, now makes texters seem angry, irritated or insincere. And it certainly can connote all those feelings. Linguist David Crystal, who has lamentedthat his comments about language change got overblown by news outlets wishing the period better luck in the next life, gives a fine example:

John’s coming to the party [statement of fact]

John’s coming to the party. [Oh dear!]

But that gravity can also be kind, expressing sincere empathy when something bad has happened to a friend, or conveying the sincerity of your own feelings. Periods can help minimize the risk of looking careless or being unclear. Texts ending in a period, in Schnoebelen’s analysis, had a disproportionate amount of the

words told, feels, feel, felt, feelings, date,sad, seems and talk. By contrast, many of the words that tended to show up in texts that did not end with a period were more casual kinds of speech:lol, u, haha, yup, ok, gonna. (lol, it’s worth noting, is arguably used as a form of punctuation itself sometimes, like emoji.)

As the world of people we text with continues to expand, from just our closest friends to our colleagues, our distant relatives, businesses, customers, and so on and so forth, punctuation such as the period will help distinguish the registers we use. Because it’s not just whatever medium we’re using that determines how formal our speech is: it’s also who we’re talking to on whatever medium. “Punctuation is a way to convey standardness,” Schnoebelen writes. “Not everyone who texts with you wants to be (or thinks they can be) colloquial with you.”

By contrast, he discovered that one of the more unlikely places to find periods was bouts of sexting. Much as a query like “Pardon me, but might I remove your pants?” would seem out of place in most bedrooms, so too does assiduous punctuating have potential to ruin the mood.

National Punctuation Day is a day meant to celebrate these marks and signals that we sometimes misuse or abuse or take for granted. And one of Schnoebelen’s findings suggests how much more they are than mere organizing splotches and lines. He found that people, at least in his texting world, often mirrored each other when it came to final period use, reflecting back the same kind of style of whoever wrote the text. That means, in their small ways, periods can help build relationships and underscore group identity.

Sure, a complete absence of punctuation could serve the same purpose. But this finding also suggests that so long as there are people using periods, there will be other people sending them right back from whence they came, coming full circle.