I’m all for enthusiasm and energy ― in speech and in writing ― but I just can’t handle a writer’s overzealous use of the exclamation point.
You know what I’m talking about. The email from your friend on vacation in Hawaii who writes, “How beautiful and sunny it is here!!!” Or the teenager who proclaims in a love letter, “I LUV U SO MUCH!!!! I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU!!!”
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in love and paradise vacations, but I get the point the first time; more exclamations are just overkill.
When I see something written with an abundance of exclamation points, I immediately think I’m reading a comic book. Have you ever read one? I think the first rule of writing a superhero comic book story is that every single sentence ends with at least one exclamation point. Pow! Bam!! Zap!!!
My advice: Unless you’ve been tied up and thrown into the trunk of a car, luckily able to find a scrap of paper where you desperately scribble the words, “Help! I’ve been kidnapped!!” before your captors lock you in, don’t use them.
I mean it!
2 Comments
October 29, 2008 at 3:40 am
Hi Red Pen Girl!
Love your blog and I’m looking forward to lots of great tips. I really like the apostrophe example. Great job!
Carolyn
October 31, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Hay Jami! Luv teh blog!!! OMG!!! Luv the hedr design! Ur so totly kewl!!! Imma lnk yr blog on my blog!!!
L8tr!!!!
Somebody once told me we are issued exactly 11 exclamation points at birth. After we’ve used em up, well I don’t what happens then. I’m pretty sure I owe my soul to the exclamation gods!!!!