Punctuation is dead because the iPhone keyboard killed it

Open any social media website as we speak, and also you’ll discover a slew of tweets, shorts, messages, movies, images, and extra — virtually all written with decrease capital letters and barely any punctuation. For me, that phenomenon began as a enjoyable statement a few years in the past, turned very irritating as I seen it increasingly, and ultimately settled into an unavoidable actuality.

Folks as of late don’t use punctuation like they need to, regardless of how a lot this could irk sticklers for grammar like me. That is very true for the youthful generations, who grew up within the mobile-first age with a smartphone of their arms earlier than they ever noticed a full bodily QWERTY keyboard.

However I posit that the development isn’t because of some teenage insurrection, coolness issue, casual texting, or lack of expertise of what the Shift or Caps Lock key can do. No, I feel the true motive is a mixture of laziness and smartphone use, significantly the iPhone and its horrible keyboard with out accessible interval or comma keys.

See, even probably the most grammar-fanatic person, like me, finally ends up dreading utilizing punctuation when it takes additional faucets so as to add it. I’ve seen this so actually because I at all times use Gboard on my Android phones, so I punctuate my sentences correctly. However on the uncommon event that I dig out my take a look at iPhone 13 to test an app or function, I find yourself hating each second of my typing expertise due to how tedious it’s so as to add durations or commas to my sentences. So I begin skipping them right here and there — typically, all over the place. A lot in order that the auto-capitalization stops getting triggered, and I find yourself with very Gen Z-looking sentences with a random string of lower-cap phrases separated by nothing greater than areas.

Pundits will say that it’s simply an additional faucet so as to add a interval (double-tap the area bar) or a comma (change to the characters structure and faucet comma), but it surely’s one additional faucet too many. If you’re firing off replies and messages at a speedy fee, the jarring pause whereas the keyboard switches to symbols after which switches again to letters is simply too annoying, particularly in case you’re doing it a number of occasions in a single message. I hate pausing mid-sentence a lot that I’ll sacrifice a comma on the altar of pace.

In fact, these of us with Android telephones know that this additional pause and change is so pointless, too. It’s been over a decade since Apple launched the primary iteration of its keyboard on iOS, and the truth that it’s nonetheless completely horrid to at the present time in iOS 18 is unforgivable. Particularly when Gboard — and different Android keyboards — have confirmed many times that the 2 additional keys for the comma and interval nonetheless look completely good, stay completely usable, and add performance as an alternative of eradicating it. Apple, nevertheless, appears steadfast in its conviction that type trumps operate, so the foolish iOS keyboard stays a giant annoyance for any grammar fiend. Plus, it’s cooler to develop Apple Intelligence than repair a keyboard, eh?

The true drawback, on the finish of the day, is that iPhones — not Android telephones — are widespread amongst Gen Z consumers, particularly within the US — a market with an enormous on-line presence and affect. Add that the majority smartphone customers have a tendency to stay to default apps on their telephones, so most of them find yourself with the default iPhone keyboard as an alternative of higher (albeit typically even slower) options. And it’s that very same keyboard that’s encouraging them to be lazy as an alternative of creating it simpler so as to add punctuation.

So sure, I blame the iPhone for killing the interval and slaughtering the comma, and I feel each of these are nice offenders within the loss of life of the capital letter. However developments are cyclical, and if the cassette participant could make a comeback, so can the comma. Who is aware of, perhaps in a 12 months or two, writing like a five-year-old will probably be passé, too, and it’ll be fashionable to make use of correct grammar once more.