The Period

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As asked many, many, many times. The original reason people placed a period as the sole content of their comment was to denote a moment of silence.

"Yes, it's a tradition. It starts out as a representation of a moment of silence or one being speechless, then evolves into the traditional asking by someone of what it means, followed by lots of people using the dot sarcastically in the ensuing MeTa thread, thus demeaning the original purpose." - posted by XQUZYPHYR at 1:09 PM PST

Additionally, the accumulation of dots is reminiscent of a tradition in Jewish and other cultures, in which pebbles and small stones are left at a gravesite or other memorial location. Also, a word balloon containing a string of dots is a custom in Japanese manga indicating a speechless moment of silence.

In recent times, a '.' comment may be to denote a snarky moment of silence for a thread that's about to be killed, or it may be to express agreement with what's already been said in a "there's nothing left to say" mode.

In the Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide FPP of February 20, 2005, almost 200 of the 500+ comments included "." (on its own line), mostly without any additional text in the comment.

The MeFi "." may have evolved from the dash ("-") comments used in the Moment of Silence Thread of September 12, 2001, in which case SilentSalamander should actually be credited with the origination of the concept. Occasional use of the dash (or a triple dot, i.e., "...") continued at least up to the Rick Gleason Memorial Thread of October 23, 2002, but the single dot had by that time become the standard denotation for a "moment of silence", and that standard continues today.

The "." is analogous to the "blank post" of old-style BBS communities like the Well and Echo, where the meaning of the blank post is largely defined by the context.


[edit] Variations

  • In addition to the '.'
    • The Steve Irwin [aka The Crocodile Hunter] thread resulted in the variation >_,__,/
    • The Kurt Vonnegut thread got quite a few '*'s. ( info )
    • The Evel Knievel thread inspired a highly favorited variation.
    • In the Syd Barrett thread, poppo offered a '*' ("a dot shining on").
    • Frank Gorshin (who played The Riddler on the 1960s Batman TV series) naturally got many '?'s.
    • Bobby Fischer earned both #s and ??s.
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