St. John. The. Amenable.

     It has been a significant number of months since I, your patron saint of sorely tried patience, have graced these digital halls. A good thing too, as said absence has until recently left me beatifically unaware of an appalling and astounding assault on a mutation of language even I, in my most pessimistic of prognostications, did not entirely expect. In my defense however, how could one see something so profoundly nonsensical coming to pass?
     I speak of course not only of the apparent demise of the period, but of the complete and utter lack of concern over such a thing. Indeed, some foolish squeaking pip even attempted to cast such a development in a positive light, instead of as the abomination that it so obviously is. Allow me, if you would be so wise, to further illuminate.
     It appears that this abandonment of proper period application is, as is the case with so many of our more lamentable contemporary tragedies, the result of the now ubiquitous medium known as text messaging. Disappointingly, many people are opting to eschew punctuating their sentences, instead leaving their expression untethered and abandoned in the minuscule bubble in which each inane thought travels . This, as many of you no doubt are aware, results in myriad short texts, instead of one that properly conveys a thought. This results in what is known as "rapid fire texting", or "machine gun texting", or "an embarrassment to all involved", and it drives all reasonable folk to madness.
     Further, use of a period to end a sentence is now sometimes taken as a marker of some sort of tone, like sarcasm or sternness. It is more and more frequently being met with defensiveness and accusations of unnecessary aggression. The exact reasoning behind this remains unknown to me, largely because I refuse to be bothered with understanding such stupidity, but also because anyone who finds a period to be overly aggressive would likely recoil in frenzied terror at the exclamation marks I would no doubt employ during such a discussion.
     Throughout my duration as your humble advocate against atrocities of articulation, I have often been regarded as a "kook", or "curmudgeon", or a "linguistic luddite." My consternation is largely ignored as the population so stubbornly marches, lemming-like, toward communicative catastrophes like the use of non-word "aggro", and what I now must assume is the intentional misuse of the word "literally." Foolish as it may seem, I have nonetheless trudged onward in my quest to make the world a less incoherent place, because I believe, quite simply, that the better we as a people communicate, the smaller the likelihood that I will be suddenly forced from this plane of existence via fury induced aneurysm.
     Gaze upon simple sensibility and repent, all ye who would trespass into the dominion of chaos! A period marks the successful completion of a thought. It is not to be replaced by simply hitting 'send.' If anything, sending a separate text should signify a new subject or topic. This would be similar to beginning a new though or idea. If a sentence does not stop, the thought it is meant to convey remains incomplete. This is the foundation for almost all of the punctuation in the English language.
     Without it we all merely resemble hyperactive children who don't know when to stop talking or even how to stop talking and then we all become complicit in making ourselves and our language dumber than it needs to be or should be Neither you nor I are Cormac McCarthy or  ee cummings and if we continue to write as though we are then eventually everything will be so hard to read that people will be reduced to communicating exclusively in recycled pictures and memes and my head will explode and everything in the world will be worse forever This feels so wrong I have to stop right now because this makes every fiber of my being feel as though it is being stomped on by some great cosmic hatred
     Was that not, despite its well written qualities, terrible? Of course it was, and it would be the acme of futility to pretend otherwise. I consider the argument that periods are unnecessary in today's digital world a fully debunked one, and now must move on to this bogus assertion that they convey some sort of overly aggressive tone. I invite you, one and all, to bear witness to the sense which is about to be made, before your very eyes!
     It is true, I grant you, that punctuation can be used to convey a tone. It is not true, however, that it always does so. Consider the following:
     I went to the store yesterday. - This sentence, as it stands, conveys a fact, but does not carry in itself -or in its little dot of an ending- any inherent tone. Such a thing must be gleaned either from the context of the larger conversation in which it is used, or from the tone the speaker uses if said sentence is spoken aloud.
     This is entirely different from, for example:
     Stop. Not punctuating. Your sentences. Right. Now. - You see? Here we have an example of over punctuation, used to create a tone of intense frustration at the inexcusable acts of violence being perpetrated in a given situation.
     Here I shall provide another example over which we may ruminate:
     I cannot believe I actually had to point this out! I am apoplectic!- These sentences end in what is known as an exclamation mark. They are used to convey many emotions, including shock, and yes, hostility. We have them because periods do not do that.
     Simply put, accusing someone of properly utilizing end sentence punctuation as a means of aggression in and of itself, without regard to the content of the actual thought being expressed, is the exact kind of abject ignorance that leads societies to damnation and cultures to ruination.
     I truly cannot make it any clearer.

   -St. John