Squint really hard and you will see a white flag fluttering over this column.
After a long and valiant battle, I am surrendering in my war against exclamation points. Longtime readers may recall that I’ve fought against their overuse for years, at least since 2012, when I wrote about how I allotted only two per semester, per student, in all written communication.
“Use them wisely,” I intoned, “because once they’re gone, they’re gone.”
I was fighting a losing battle even then against the forces of excessive enthusiasm. “I have to go home and shovel snow!” is not worthy of an exclamation point, even when people love winter.
Ditto “I hate broccoli!,” which looks silly with an exclamation point after the lowercase “i,” like a gremlin in the keyboard flipped the letter upside down and typed it again, although the enthusiasm would also be misplaced if the exclamation point followed “carrot” or “cabbage.” Some preferences don’t merit excitement, no matter how heartfelt.
Since I wrote that column, I have received countless emails — okay, six — where the writer starts by saying, “Please excuse me, but ...” or some variation, followed by information that ends with an exclamation point. Some of that news has been genuinely exciting, such as a child accepted to a prestigious school, and merited exclamation points. Other news, not so much. But who am I to judge?
My allocation of exclamation points has always been persnickety, anyway. Some semesters, in a rush of generosity, I dole out four or five. The point was to make them special so that they didn’t end up littering the compositional highway like so many McDonald’s wrappers.
What I failed to reckon with is the continual adaptation of language to new ways of communicating. Take, for instance, text messages.
Audiences understand punctuation differently in these situations than in more formal types of writing. A period at the end of a text can come across as cold and rude. (One study a few years back found that texts ending in a period were deemed “insincere.”)
Texts ending without a period apparently leave the door open for additional communication. Even a one-word text like “No” can be perceived differently with or without a period. Students tell me they are less likely to continue a texting conversation with somebody whose responses end in periods because that signals the person no longer wants to engage.
Exclamation points are a way of showing excitement is situations where the writer’s intent is hard to determine. They are, in effect, the precursors of emojis, which do the same. Exclamation points began as the Latin “io,” which means “exclamation of joy.” In a space-saving move, the “o” became a period and slid beneath the “i.” (The same consolidation occurred when “questio,” or “question,” was shortened to “qo” and then to today’s question mark.)
So if I’m so worried readers will miss my irony, cynicism, eye-rolling or whatever when I write “Way to go, Insert Imbecilic Politician Here” on Twitter that I add the appropriate emoji, then why am I so uptight about the exclamation point?
I guess I shouldn’t be. So I’m not anymore.
Don’t get me wrong. Exclamation points still don’t belong in formal writing, look ridiculous in newspapers, magazines and presidential tweets, and have no business in novels or short stories unless they are part of dialogue, and even then only sparingly.
Make the words do the emotional heavy-lifting, not the punctuation.
But in less formal communication, let the exclamation points take flight as often as writers like, provided they take into account the effect so much unbridled joy will have on more sober-minded audiences.
In the saccharin-sweet world of writing, I’m still a diabetic. But for those who aren’t, you have my blessing to rain down exclamation points with abandon. Not that you needed my approval — and not that you asked for it.
Here’s the place where, if I were pandering, I would say something clever and end with an exclamation point. But I’m not, so I won’t.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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