What Is 'Boomer Ellipses' And Why Is Gen Z Confused About It?

It’s not just fashion or eating habits or even dating styles that change with time and over generations. How we communicate — text or speak — also varies depending on the generation you’re speaking with.

In recent years, several Gen Z internet users have claimed that they see the excessive use of ellipses (three consecutive dots) by older people or more specifically “boomers”, people born from 1946 to 1964. The younger generation deems ellipses as a sign of hesitation or passive aggressiveness. This use of ellipses has been dubbed “Boomer ellipses”.

A Reddit post that talks about “boomer ellipses” says, “The normal tech-savvy person uses ellipses to basically say, “I wanna say more but I won’t.” But boomers use it all the time. Almost every professional email, slack, or text message I receive is always something along ‘Yes… that works…’”

Commenting on it a Reddit user reasoned, “Generational differences. I’m sure Boomers are asking, “Why don’t Zoomers use proper capitalisation or punctuation?” Both answers: Stylistic choices that reflect their respective generations.” Another person argued, “The same reason young people end phrases with lol and lmao even when they aren’t saying anything funny.”

Recently, Adam Aleksic, a “linguistics influencer” with 1.2 million Instagram followers, tried to theorise why boomers use ellipses, whereas Gen Z doesn’t. Technically as per the rules of punctuation, ellipses represent a pause or indicate that something has been intentionally left out. However, when it comes to electronic communication via text, its use often changes.

Adam Aleksic says that boomers use ellipses to include multiple thoughts in one single text. They acquired this habit of using multiple ellipses back when people were charged by text message or SMS. In order to say more in just one text, boomers would use “…” to separate their thoughts. Whereas Gen Z does not have any such limitation and therefore they freely shoot multiple texts, rarely punctuating their thoughts with ellipses. This video got over two lakh likes.

An Instagram user commented, “It’s super annoying to get multiple notifications! Plus, on group texts, sometimes somebody else replies at the same time and it cuts the reading of the point you were making.”

Another person wrote, “I don’t understand why they can’t or don’t just use a single period. Most of these “separate thoughts” are just independent clauses, not totally different topics. Instead of “hey guys… we’re having a BBQ today… come over if you want…..” why wouldn’t it just be condensed to “Hey guys, we’re having a BBQ today; come over if you want.” I don’t really understand why postcards or SMS rules would completely dismantle English grammar conventions.”