Exclamation Points

A Love-Hate Story

It feels like defeat. But after decades of swearing off this awful, intrusive punctuation, I have conceded that ending sentences with exclamation points is, on occasion, useful. And rarely, necessary. And for many people that know me, this is a big concession.

I’ve always hated them. If they pop in the middle of the prose in a novel, I stop reading the novel. If someone I follow on Twitter uses them, I stop following them. They’re not as bad as someone shouting at you with Caps-Lock, but they’re close. They’re the disingenuous, sleazy guy who just met you: “Hey, Buddy! Good to meet you!” Or the impossibly happy co-worker: “Great! Great! How are you?!” Or the frazzled, nervous parent running the birthday party that’s now out of control: “We’re having a good time, right?!” That’s how they sound to me.

Then I realized one of my actual issues with exclamation points: they’re a crutch. An easy add-on for people to tack onto an unfocused sentence. ‘This is not negative!!! I just added three of those bad boys on there!!!’

I also think they extend from insecurity. I’ve noticed some people are just fearful that what they’ve written will be taken the wrong way, so they exclaim. And the exclamation point reads like — “just so there’s no confusion, I mean no offense by what I’ve written and you can’t get offended because this line on top of a dot excuses me from any misconceptions!”’

Then I started using them.

Take this sentence: “I’ll be happy to come in and take care of that problem for you.”

Or: “I’ll be happy to come in and take care of that problem for you!”

The first sentence reads flat — even sarcastic. The second is friendlier. It also feels phony to me, but I asked myself which risk would I rather run: appearing like an aloof asshole, or appearing insincere but helpful? (Furthermore, isn’t this contradicting my own rule about using them out of insecurity? Yep.)

So, I developed a new rule: in business e-mails, if an exclamation point changes the tone of my sentence in a real way, and not just as insurance for lazy writing, then I’ll use it.

In conclusion, have a nice day.