Here is another article about the disappearing period, this one from the New York Times. The article cleverly makes its point by omitting all periods:

“We are at a momentous moment in the history of the full stop,” Professor Crystal, an honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor, said in an interview after he expounded on his view recently at the Hay Festival in Wales

“In an instant message, it is pretty obvious a sentence has come to an end, and none will have a full stop,” he added “So why use it?”

I’ll just point out that generally the author achieves his non-periodness by writing one-sentence paragraphs.  Periods are less important at the end of a paragraph than they are in the middle of a paragraph.  So maybe this indicates we’re on our way to changing the way we view paragraphs.  Wouldn’t surprise me.

But I also wanted to point out the decline of the use of the apostrophe in tweets and text messages. Here is Marco Rubio during a tweetstorm back in May:

If you can live with a Clinton presidency for 4 years thats your right. I cant and will do what I can to prevent it.

In Florida only 2 legitimate candidates on ballot in Nov. I wont vote for Clinton & I after years of asking people to vote I wont abstain.

On a  smart phone, adding the apostrophe requires you to do an annoying switch of keyboards.  Why bother?  The fact is, losing the apostrophe doesn’t make the tweets much more difficult to understand. Once you leave the apostrophes out of your tweets and text messages, it’s harder to add them to your emails.  Next thing you know, Donald Trump is president, and civilization has ended.