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Exclamation Point

The Source

Maybe it’s the English teacher in me. Or perhaps my mood it tainted by too many emails and Facebook messages from students, but dog-gone it, I am sick of the exclamation point. Would the last sentence have had more impact had I added the offending punctuation? I doubt it. I get an email marked “Urgent!” Okay, you said it was urgent. You needn’t say it again by stabbing the end of your sentence with hyperbole. Urgent means…well..urgent. To add the unnecessary line and dot is like saying, “This emergency is an emergency!” And of course it’s usually neither urgent nor an emergency. Advertising veritably drips with exclamation points. Some ads try to double or triple their impact by adding additional exclamation points. “Sale Ends Soon!!” Does that mean this is an emergency of an emergency of an emergency? Does anyone put three periods at the end of a sentence to double the finalizing impact? Do two question marks mean you are doubly ignorant of the answer? Bottom line: is there a soul who’s in doubt about what a single punctuation mark means? Okay…most don’t know what a semi-colon means and those who do know seldom use them, but at least I’ve ever seen an ad that red “Three Days Only Semi-Colon Semi-Colon” (!!!) And of course the over-user of punctuation assumes certain ignorance on the part of the reader. The display ad reads “On Sale This Week Only!” Would you simply pass by notice that reads simply, “On sale this week only,” but suddenly drop your child into the hot bath water, neglect your leprous grandmother and dash barefooted on broken glass to the store if they’d only have added the exclamation mark? It may be the profanity syndrome. Most linguistic experts will tell you that people curse because it’s an easy way to provide emphasis without having to actually think of the proper words. Come to think of it, the most profane people I know are not members of Mensa. Some can spell. So maybe that’s it. We overuse the exclamation mark when we simply don’t know how to express something strongly. We lack the vocabulary. Or it could be the “Kilroy was Here” disorder…the sort of thing that causes young lovers to carve their names into trees or loners to write their names on highway overpasses. Maybe they simply want to be noticed. If that’s the case then I have sad news for your lonely condition… When everybody’s doing something, it ain’t different no more, Bubba. Your plethora of punctuation looks just like every other idiot’s over exclamated exclamations. Say it once, say it plainly, then shut up. The tale is told of Winston Churchill…or maybe Mark Twain..or maybe Calvin Coolidge who was hired to speak at a college commencement. Winston (or Mark or Calvin) rose to the podium, thought a moment then said, “It just occurs to me that I have nothing important to say,” then sat down. Undoubtedly the most memorable speech the graduates had heard in their stint at the institution. Brevity is good. Brevity is memorable. Brevity sells. The newspaper or magazine is seldom the culprit. In fact, good journalists hoard their exclamation points and let them build up a little steam in case a world war or oil spill breaks out. The fault usually lies with the advertiser who somehow thinks that a vertical line dangling over a dot will somehow improve the taste of his lettuce or up the mileage on his car. Some say that the exclamation point has its origins in the Latin word for joy. An “l” written over an “o.” The little rascal didn’t show up in English until the 15th century and the first official use of the mark was in the German edition of the Luther bible. Amen, Martin! Manual typewriters before the 1970’s didn’t even have the little buggers. You had to type a period, backspace, and then add an “l.” If you really want to impress the cocktail party crowd, just drop the word “interrobang.” (It’s a seldom-used punctuation mark in which an exclamation point is superimposed onto a question mark for sentences that are both awe-filled and questioning.) One study shows that women use exclamation marks more than men do. No comment. But of course the main problem with splattering exclamation marks all over advertising copy, emails, and text messages, is that like the little boy who cried Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!, when he really needed to get folks’ attention the effect had worn off. He’d been better off mumbling… “Uh…wolf.”