EVERYONE GETS A CAR!

Have you ever seen that episode of Oprah where she gives away a car to everyone in the audience?

“You get a car! and YOU get a car! AND YOU GET A CAR!”

It’s probably one of the most memed things I’ve seen on the internet because the woman is going nuts.

To be fair, rightly so. I mean, it’s brilliant, she’s giving away cars. You’d be well bitter if you’d missed tickets to that show and ended up with the signed book from whoever she’d been interviewing the next day instead.

Anyway, this car clip, and the energy and enthusiam Oprah exudes has become what pops into my mind when I read a sentence with an exclamation mark. As if it’s this uncontainable, explosive release of energy.

To back up a bit, I have a weird relationship with certain types of punctuation.

I’ll come clean: I’m one of those grammar people. I feel calm when I see the correct use of an Oxford comma and have to resist the urge to text other grammar people if I see a misused apostrophe.

Basically, I just like seeing things being done correctly.

However, I don’t think I’ll ever be at peace with exclamation marks because they have a disproportionate power over other types of punctuation to completely skew the tone of the sentence. They’re the unexpected anchovy of literature.

Really, exclamation marks should be simple; they’re pretty self explantory. A sentence which calls for a strong emotion, such as excitement or outrage, is the perfect case for using one.

This is logical. And as per my enjoyment of correctly used grammar I should really just accept it. But for some reason it just doesn’t compute with me.

For example, if I read “I’m so excited!” I picture someone literally running around a room unable to contain themselves. If I read “I’m furious!” I struggle not to picture this person throwing plates at a wall.

But I’m hard to please, you see.

If I read “I’m so excited.” I’d probably assume the person was being sarcastic. Similarly if I read “I’m furious.” I’d think it was a poor choice of word. I mean, you’ve just said you’re ‘furious’, show some passion, would you?

It’s like I’ve associated exclamation marks with extremism and there’s no midway zone.

If I try and pin point where this tense relationship with exclamation marks started, I’d probably blame my addiction to MSN messenger as a 12 year old. The same online chat service which, by default, taught me to touch type also exposed me to what was the first real abuse of Shift+1.

Hey!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG!!!!!!!

Lol!!!!!!!!!!

Everything was just so intense back then.

In general MSN taught us how to speak hyperbole as a default. In reality ‘lol’ was never more than a nasal puff and I can confirm I’ve never in my life rolled on the floor with laughter.

However, based on the types of conversations we were having and the loose use of exclamation marks, you’d be forgiven for thinking we were all sitting there smashing our keyboards frantically with our eyes wide and brows firmly lifted.

As a very broad out take from this, the ability to communicate an excited emotion via a smack of exclamation marks created a habit of relying on punctuation, not language, to get our point across.

It has been a long time since I’ve seen a set of ‘!!!!’ in the wild, or at least to the same degree as MSN days. However, if I were to guess why they seem bug me now, it’s because people still seem use them to do the job that slightly more considered words could do just as well.

If, instead of using exclamation marks, we put a bit more thought and precision into our messages, we would actually come across with more conviction than simply relying on punctuation as a device to prove our point.

Then if we are indeed compelled to actually use an exclamation mark, it would pack more of a punch because we’ve not read one at the end of every other sentence. An exercise of recalibrating its power type thing.

That said, if you are giving away cars, by all means, go full Oprah. I think it’s fair to say in an event like that all rules go out the window.