In cases when a question mark is used, there is no need to use a comma as well; instead, the attributive tag should come immediately after the closing quotation marks. Consider the example below: “Do you want to come to the movies with us ?”, Mary asked.

The period, question mark, and exclamation mark are the Three Musketeers of punctuation: all for one and one for all. All three marks of punctuation have the same function: to indicate a full stop. They all show the end of a complete thought. They can all prevent run-on sentences.

When used as interjections, full stop means used to emphasize the end of an important statement or point when speaking, whereas period means that’s final. When used as nouns, full stop means the punctuation mark “” (indicating the end of a sentence or marking an abbreviation), whereas period means a length of time.

In a 2016 Washington Post story titled Stop. Using. Periods. Period., economics writer Jeff Guo concluded that the line break is now the default method of punctuation in texting. Full stops, he said, can cause the message to be perceived as “cold, angry or passive-aggressive.”

Two dots is an informal and cute way of implying there is something else to say, except philosophically you don’t need to say it at that moment, so it’s more of a short-cut, and yes two dots is quicker that three since the latter means something else, formally any-way.

And using fewer punctuation marks is generally acceptable. Here’s a quick rule: when texting with your family, you should use exclamation points and question marks, but periods are optional. Why do we recommend still using question marks and exclamation points when texting your family?

The use of the period is one example of situational code-switching: When using one in a text message, it’s perceived as overly formal. So when you end your text with a period, it can come across as insincere or awkward, just like using formal spoken language in a casual setting like a bar.