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寫作中，句子結尾就要打上句點，簡訊卻改變了這個規則。新研究發現，一則訊息如果以句號作結，竟然會被認為不夠真誠。進入本文前，請先想想以下這些單字的英文怎麼說？A.誤解 B.模擬 C.細微的

Binghamton University's Harpur College observed 126 students, who read a series of messages displayed as texts on a screen or handwritten notes on loose-leaf paper, which were similar to notes students passed around before texting was available. In the 16 experimental exchanges, the sender's message contained a statement followed by an invitation phrased as a questions such as, "Dave gave me his extra ticket. Wanna come?"

　紐約賓漢頓大學的哈波學院觀察了126位學生閱讀一系列訊息後的反應，訊息透過螢幕或手寫在活頁紙上呈現（像手機簡訊出現前，學生彼此傳遞的手寫紙條）。在16個訊息交換實驗中，發送訊息者傳出邀請問句，像是，「Dave給我他多出來的一張票，要來嗎？」

　The receiver then gave a one-word response like “Okay”, “Sure”, “Yeah” or “Yup”.Half of the participants' responses were with a full stop and the other half did not use it.Based on the responses, text messages that ended with a full stop were rated less sincere than text messages that did not end with a period. These results suggest that punctuation can (A)misconstrue or influence the meaning of text messages.

　回覆者給了一個字的回覆，像是，Okay、Sure、Yeah和Yup。有一半的參與者在回覆中使用了句號，另外一半則沒有使用。用句號作結的回應，被評為比較不真誠。這樣的結果顯示，標點符號可能會造成誤解，或影響訊息意義。

TEXT MESSAGES ARE CHANGING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 簡訊如何改變英文

　New Words: Open any recent published dictionary and you will see SMS and LOL added to it.

　Acronyms aren't just a short way to get your point across in text message, they have been added as permanent words to the English language.

　新字：打開任何一本最近發行的字典，你會發現一些新字：SMS（簡訊）和LOL（大笑）。

　這些首字母縮寫組成的字，不只是簡訊中簡易表達的方式，也成為英文中永久存在的字詞。

　No more hyphens: Nearly 16,000 thousand words have been stripped of their hyphens in recent dictionary versions: leap-frog has become leapfrog, make-over has become makeover, and post-modern has become postmodern, all because people are too lazy to reach for that one extra key.

　連字號消失：近期的字典版本中，大約有1千6百萬個字去掉連字號，像是：

　leap-frog→leapfrog

　post-modern→postmodern

　全都是因為人們懶得加上連字號。

　No more thought out ideas or emotion: Thoughts and ideas are now being constricted to 160 or 140 character tweets, so the color and excitement of explaining things is trickling down to just a few boring words.

　不再多想：所有想法和意見都被限制到160或140個字的發文，解釋事情的興奮演變為無聊字詞的涓涓細流。

　Spelling/Reading/Writing: We now have auto-correct, so no need to learn and memorize how a word is spelled. Text messages can be created without using letters, and it's no wonder American students' reading and writing scores haven't improved over the years.

　拼字/閱讀/寫作：打字有自動校正功能，記憶字怎麼拼變得沒必要。不需要一個個輸入字母，難怪美國學生的閱讀與寫作分數在過去這幾年都沒有進步。

　“Texting is lacking many of the social cues used in actual face-to-face conversations,” said Celia Klin, associate professor of psychology and associate dean at Binghamton University's Harpur College. “When speaking, people easily convey social and emotional information with eye gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses, and so on. “People obviously can't use these mechanisms when they are texting.” Thus, it makes sense that texters rely on what they have available to them -- emoticons, deliberate misspellings that (B)mimic speech sounds and, according to our data, punctuation.”

　哈波學院副院長暨心理系副教授Celia Klin表示，「短訊缺少許多面對面交談中使用的社會線索。交談中，透過眼神交會、面部表情、聲音語調、語氣停頓，人們可以輕易傳達社交和情緒資訊，但傳訊息時卻無法使用這些機制，因此，依靠表情符號、刻意拼錯字來模擬說話聲音、也依靠我們研究的標點符號。」

　Recently, Klin's team conducted a follow-up study and found that text response with an exclamation mark is interpreted as more sincere. “Given that people are wonderfully adept at communicating complex and (C)nuanced information in conversations, it's not surprising that as texting evolves, people are finding ways to convey the same types of information in their texts.”

　最近Klin的團隊進一步研究發現，使用驚嘆號回覆的訊息，會讓人感覺更真誠。「既然人能在對話中溝通複雜和微妙的資訊，隨著簡訊溝通進化，開始在簡訊中找到傳達同樣資訊的方式，也就不難想像了。」

　參考資料：Daily Mail Online

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