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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
Making fun of things is usually okay.
And often obligatory.
Especially if you do it on the Internet.
More so in the PIT.
Phrasing.
And be careful, at your age too much interrobanging and you could throw out your back.
A new form of the interrobang!
Inverted interrobanging is still illegal in some states.
It is getting hard to distinguish the line between actual outrage and faux ironic outrage. We’re up against the theoretical limits of the parody speed.
I do it for medical reasons.
You need a doctor’s note.
I once embraced the punctilious use of interpunction. I was a slave to grammatical conformity and self-restraint. I believed, as I had been taught, that the em hyphen was to be used sparingly, never more than twice in a sentence, and never in more than one sentence in a paragraph — best not to exceed once per page, in fact.
Then I read John Irving and was unblinkered; the em dash can be used boldly and often — even in sentences containing a semi-colon.
I will never go back.
(And you can have my exclamation point when you pry it from my cold dead caps-shifted left pinky.)
I haven’t seen a bec de corbin in years. Thanks for reminding me…
Check behind the sofa.
You’re fancy pants, alla youse.*
You got periods, You got commas. You got question marks. I don’t know whose bringing in the exclamation points. Maybe the Los Angeles combine, I dunno.**
*Movie reference.
**Same movie.
It’s gettin’ so a businessman can’t expect no return from a fixed fight.
Now you tell me. And, so that’s what did it?
Poe’s Law.
Gentlemen, this is a family site!
Maybe Gambino. Maybe Manson. But still a family site.
Arahant, I am seriously puzzled as to how someone whose alter ego is a pirate could ever be against exclamation points.
Without the exclamation points one who writes about the Pirate King would need to enlarge the type whenever the hell bent and adventurous one wishes to exclaim anything to his colleagues.
Argh. Matey.
This brings me to musing that perhaps you are you but you happen to have an
Evil Twin.
Feel free to ‘fess up now, or leave me to my musings.
*Sigh* It’s “Arrr.” It’s a rhotic form of, “Aye.” Also, if it is dialogue, it might be appropriate. As Michael said above:
If the pirate king is doing so, fine.
Nailed it. Nuthin’ but net.
I stand corrected as far as the exclamation being proper when someone is shouting or screaming.
But I still am not yet convinced you do not have an inner evil twin
!Inner?
So are you sure you meant “Inner?” rather than “Inner ⸮“
Maybe.
“My characters are merely exuberant! That doesn’t make them jokes!” scoffed the writer, throwing down his stylus and tablet in disdain.
“Loudmouthed and otherwise highly emotive people DESERVE sensitive fictional treatments!!” His colleague raged, and when words proved inadequate to the need of his righteous indignation, shoved his head forcefully though the drywall.
I’m sulking. Spouse just pointed out that perhaps I am channeling my inner evil twin, but projecting that out to you.
Arahant’s secret is both twins are evil.
Okay, help me out, here. Whose head got shoved through the drywall? I mean, I’m a fan of pushing faces through drywall, but I’m lost. Who got pasted? The guy hollering, or the guy putting up with it?
Who cares? The point is, jobs were created! Every hole punched through drywall is an opportunity, a kind of gypsum stimulus, for some enterprising mud-slinger to pick up a few bucks and feed his family. Keep those dollars moving, buddy!