If He Doesn’t Text In Complete Sentences, I’m Not Interested

I judge a guy based on the way he texts and you should too. Regardless of his level of education, he should be able to construct a simple sentence.

  1. “I luv u” just isn’t half as romantic. If you reach a level of love with this guy, you don’t want his sweet notes to come off like a third grader wrote them. Seriously, if you’re in a mature, adult relationship, a text with intentional misspellings is anything other than cute.
  2. If he doesn’t know what a question mark is, how am I expected to believe he’s going to know how to take care of other things? These are literally the basics we all learned in elementary school—the way to properly end a sentence. And they take less than a second to find on your phone. If he can’t do the most basic of tasks, how can I expect him to make sure his bills are paid or take care of taxes?
  3. I already know off the bat that we’re going to have a ton of miscommunication. Periods, exclamation points, and question marks help set the tone in a text. If I don’t know if he’s asking me a question or making a general statement, we’re going to have some trouble. I’m at an age where I’m totally over petty fights about nothing and by being too lazy to communicate properly, he’s almost setting us up for one.
  4. Sexting with emojis is almost embarrassing. He’d better not even send me a peach or an eggplant with sweat droplets coming out of it. It almost makes it seem like he’s too afraid to use words like “penis” and “vagina.” Unless it derived from some private joke we had, it’s a real turn-off. If I just met him at the club and he’s indicating that he wants to sleep with me by sending a row of eggplants, I might question his actual age.
  5. It makes it seem like he doesn’t have time for me. If he can’t send me a complete sentence with his thoughts, it makes it seem like the communication is just rushed. It’s like he couldn’t even give me some respect by proofreading what he was going to tell me. If we’re just meeting and he texts me with typos and a ton of shorthand, I’m not going to answer back. Probably because I’ll be spending that time decoding what he said in the first place.
  6. Texts don’t cost extra anymore. This isn’t 2003—everyone has a smartphone and an unlimited texting plan these days. That means that it won’t cost extra to include some punctuation. He really has nothing to lose by including it and literally everything to gain.
  7. If we’re at a level where I loop him into a group text with my parents, I don’t want to be embarrassed. My parents are still mastering the art of the text. It’s kind of cute and I’m so glad they’re on board with this method of communication—it makes life easier. We have a few family group chats going on and if things get serious with a guy, I’d hate for them to be confused over the gibberish he sends over. Who I date is a reflection on me, remember.
  8. I deserve someone who’s kind to the English language. Everyone makes mistakes and grammatical errors on occasion—I’m not necessarily trying to be the grammar police over here, but if I get a text from someone that states “What u doin Sun” and moments later get a text from someone else that says “What are your plans for this weekend?” the latter is the one getting the response.
  9. Short texts almost make me wonder if he’s sending the same thing to every girl. Know who doesn’t have time to text appropriately? The guy who’s working three text chains at once. I’m looking for a relationship that’s monogamous, and there’s something about incomplete texts that just scream “I’m a player.”
  10. I don’t want to waste my time looking up every acronym. My acronym knowledge literally stopped in the late ’90s. I know LOL, BRB, and L8R. I get those. LOL was keyboard shorthand way before emojis came around. For everything else, I need to do a Google search. I don’t want him to ask me if I have a GSOH; I want him to ask me if I have a good sense of humor. He can expect the conversation to naturally grow from there.
Karen Belz is a New Jersey native who is currently living in Maryland. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Speech Communication with a focus in Broadcasting and Print Media Studies from Millersville University of Pennsylvania. Since graduating, she has written for sites like LittleThings, HelloGiggles, and Scary Mommy and is currently an e-commerce editor at Bustle.

When she's not writing, she enjoys making her phone run out of memory after taking too many photos of her dog. You can find her on Twitter @karenebelz or on Instagram @karenbelz.
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