Fun & Famous
the power of exclamation marks
Maybe it's because I have a writing profession or because I'm just an incredibly whiny person, but I am seriously allergic to exclamation marks. Any sentence that ends with an exclamation mark immediately loses any hint of intellect and sounds like a young hysterical teenager is speaking. If you need exclamation marks to emphasize your sentence, then you need to make a better sentence. It's that simple.
When I see a column or article with an exclamation mark in a magazine, website, blog, or anywhere else, my neck hairs stand up, it's that bad now. I also immediately stop taking the writer in question seriously. If application letters come in with exclamation marks in them, there's a good chance you'll end up on the no pile without an interview, and I’m not even sorry about that.
‘A sentence that needs punctuation to clarify what is being said is a bad sentence.’
A sentence that needs punctuation to clarify what is being said is a bad sentence! And besides, everything immediately comes across as so screaming and exaggerated! As if you are constantly protesting on the barricades! Of course, there are exceptions. In casually written emails, an exclamation mark might slip from my hand, and I often use the closing: “Love! xxx L.”
Some time ago, I realized that there are moments when an exclamation mark is not only just acceptable but also truly indispensable. A friend and I were already WhatsApping to find a date to meet up. That's always a huge hassle for us: we both travel a lot and have busy schedules, so we seriously ended up with a date at the end of May. “This time we can't cancel, okay,” I sent her. And she replied that this date is “set in stone.”
Until a few days later when I had to cancel after all, a trip came up in between. “Sorry sorry sorry, don’t hate me, but I have to cancel our weekend abroad. Are you free on the 21st? Otherwise the week after? Kiss.” That's literally what I sent. She didn't respond, and a week later I still hadn't heard anything, but she had read my message. We often cancel on each other, she couldn't be that angry, could she?
‘She wasn't mad about the fact that I canceled, she was mad about the way I did it.’
So I decided to call her. Long story short: she wasn't mad about the fact that I canceled, she was mad about the way I did it. “I thought it was such a blunt shitty message, I didn't feel like responding to that.” Now, I often have trouble with people finding me blunter than I intend, but this time I was genuinely unaware of any wrongdoing. I analyzed my message again and then thought: damn, she's right. Because compare the following messages:
“Sorry sorry sorry, don’t hate me, but I have to cancel our weekend abroad. Are you free on the 21st? Otherwise the week after? Kiss.”
“Sorry sorry sorry! Don’t hate me! But I have to cancel our weekend abroad. Are you free on the 21st? Otherwise the week after? Kiss!!!”
The first message is quite businesslike and curt, in the second message you suddenly ‘hear’ how much I regret having to cancel. So: lesson learned. From now on, I will sprinkle messages in which I have to say something that might come across as unpleasant with more than enough exclamation marks, so there can be no misunderstanding about it. And if I find someone annoying and want to make that clear without explicitly arguing, I’ll be nicely passive-aggressive: “Okay. That's fine. Talk to you later.”
Still not so crazy, that exclamation mark!
