The exclamation mark – or point, depending where you’re from – is, in my opinion, a very much overused and abused punctuation mark. The humble full stop never seems to get the same sort of attention. Everyone knows when to use it (except apparently online where grammar seems to have been left at the curb, but that’s a whole different discussion). I mean, no one adds multiple full stops to the end of a sentence to indicate it’s over. There’s no need really. It’s not going to indicate a bigger or better sentence end.
So, why then, do people feel inclined to use the exclamation mark when the sentence isn’t even an exclamation? Or, worse, use it multiple times at the end of a sentence. The very nature of the exclamation mark is to draw attention to the statement already. It’s indicating surprise, expressing emotion, emphasising interjections, indicating alarm. So when I see ten exclamation marks all together I can only assume it denotes such massive alarm, emotion, surprise that the author’s head actually exploded. A shame really. A few less and they could have remained perfectly healthy.
We were taught, and this is probably old school, except in specific circumstances, that if you can’t emphasise those emotions with the words you are using then you need to keep working at your text until it actually produces the desired result. And not rely on the little line with a dot.
Like this:
Tags: english usage, exclamation mark, exclamation point, grammar, punctuation
Nice post!!!
(Sorry, someone had to do it).
LOL Jem. Lucky you limited it to three. You know the possible outcome.