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If I Were Your Writing Coach, I’d Take Away Your Exclamation Point
Exclamation point abuse! It happens to far too many writers! It seems they just can’t help themselves!
Okay, look, you get one exclamation point per year or per book. That’s it. And I just used up my three-year allotment. Unless you are illustrating a point of a character who always seems to be in exclamatory mode, a character who is a joke and a punchline, then you might use more exclamation points to show what an idiot he is. Otherwise, just don’t. Exclamation points should be treated like saffron: Just a few bits go a very long way.
Published in Group Writing
Someone call me? Could’a swore I heard my name.
What if I’m shouting or screaming?
You usually only do that with the zweihander.
We assume that you’re the one doing the teaching at that point.
Or the bec de corbin.
But then what would you do to those that call it a “Bang”?
One of my regular chores in editing is removing people’s exclamation points. Or at least reducing their numbers to one.
I had a cow-orker who consistently used two. Not one. Not three. But two.
Three is almost forgivable if one is REALLY EXCITED!!!
But two? That’s a no.
Do you swat their wrists while shouting “No!!! Bad Dog!!!”?
I should hope so. Talk about fringe benefits of the job.
You could have avoided that issue by just calling it the “dot-dot-dot thingy” like I do.
JUST! DON’T! DO! IT!
I say you’re language elitists and that’s all there is to that!
Now the use of triple exclamation marks is whole other thing.
You’re saying you’re only a low-level language élitist?
Yes!
Scalawag.
Arahant, did you know that the “interabang” (?!) has a respected place among punctuation marks? It’s sometimes used after a rhetorical question of a certain type.
I was raised on comic books in the 1960s. Every sentence ends in an exclamation point! Everywhere! All the time! Excepting the occasional question, but often exclamations points were thrown in there as well!
They don’t usually do that anymore. Kids these days! No respect for the old ways!
“Hey! You kids! Get off my…!”
I am aware. In a book, one might encounter it in a quotation, but it probably should not otherwise appear.
Arahant, here’s a sentence that needs an interabang: You call that a hat?!
As you see, it’s a rhetorical question combined with an exclamation.
Sure, but what’s the context? Is it in a book? If it is in a book, is it dialogue?
That is also one of the examples here. I prefer: “You’re dying‽”
And, yes, I do.
Arahant, you can wear a hat. Well, not really. But you can wear a costume: Zorro at the top, Seinfeld’s puffy shirt at the bottom. I’m not quite sure what kind of gathering that outfit would be appropriate for — unless it was for a meeting of Zorro puffy shirted perverts who read proclamations to one another for the kicks.
By the way, where in the world did you find a typeface with an interabang in it?
There are many available: ‽. The hard part is finding this: ⸘. Cause, how you going to interrobang in Spanish without the inverted interrobang?
It’s hard being a poet, Kent. One has to dress the part.
I understand. I sometimes dress up like Shirley Temple (of her Bill Bojangles Robinson era). Man, that’s one cute kid. Marie, who is forever trying to quash my creative endeavors, doesn’t like it when I come to bed dressed like Shirley Temple, but I say to hell with stick-in-the-mud wives.
I would say, “Pics, or it didn’t happen,” but I really don’t want to see any such picture. It’s bad enough it’s now invaded my brain.
“wrist”. That’s cute.
Biden can adopt Jeb’s exclamation point and run as Joey Finger!
Also,
Is making fun of the Internet outrage mentality okay?
“Trump is Hitler!!!!11!1!1!!11!!eleventy!!!!11!!”