Good evening, kibitzers!!!!!!!!!!
Did that seem friendly enough to you? I read an interesting article about punctuation in general, and the exclamation point in particular, in the Houston Chronicle the other day. The article is titled “Why Are Exclamation Points Everywhere?!” I didn’t realize they were everywhere, but when I stop to think about it, I guess it does strike me as true. A number of other things in the article also strike me as true, including the harshness of periods (I’m serious):
In one recent study, undergraduates at Binghamton University-State University of New York reported that text messages ending in a period struck them as abrupt and insincere. As the Wall Street Journal reported, "It's especially bad in the workplace, where an exclamation point can suggest anything from actual excitement or gratitude, to general friendliness, to reassurance that 2 p.m. works for a meeting, to ... 'I'm not mad about the other day. I swear, it's fine!'"
I don’t know how much you think about appropriate punctuation, but it is frequently on my mind when I send texts. I think it is partly generational, as I’m young enough that I hold certain mores about punctuation in text messages. In texts with friends, I never end the text with a period. If I don’t end with an exclamation point or a question mark, I do not end with punctuation at all. Ending with a period would almost be an act of aggression. My boyfriend will end his texts with periods when he’s mad at me—in fact, one time he accidentally ended with a period and immediately followed up with a text apologizing for the accidental period. I know how silly this must seem to some people, but the apology seemed appropriate at the time given the gravity of period usage. (Some of you have no idea what the fuck I’m going on about...I can sense it.)
Anyway, the point of the article was not the period, but rather the exclamation point and its overuse:
How did the exclamation point come to dominate our correspondence? It started with a cultural shift in the way we communicate, linguists say. As written communication — via email, text, instant messaging and social media — came to replace many of our in-person conversations, we lost a vital element of expression. Words, after all, are only part of communication: tone is equally crucial, and notoriously difficult to convey in writing. In person, you can say "thank you" sarcastically with a sneer, or genuinely with a smile. In writing, your options are more limited.
[...]
"The single exclamation mark is being used not as an intensity marker, but as a sincerity marker," linguist Gretchen McCulloch told The Atlantic's Julie Beck. "If I end an email with 'Thanks!,' I'm not shouting or being particularly enthusiastic; I'm just trying to convey that I'm sincerely thankful, and I'm saying it with a bit of a social smile."
In fact, one exclamation point is barely enough, even in the buttoned-up world of business communication.
Hilariously, the article calls this “exclamation-point inflation.” Before I read the article, I’d never really thought about whether I overuse the exclamation point, but I suppose I do. It is definitely true that I spend actual time thinking about whether or not I should use an exclamation point, especially in my email communications. With students, I feel as though it comes off as too informal—I want to be down-to-earth and friendly, but it feels like the exclamation point is too much. With friends and colleagues, I’ll often use it for exactly the reason the article notes: to appear enthusiastic and sincere (although I don’t think about it in those terms explicitly when I’m writing the email). In correspondence with superiors, I am more careful. My immediate boss and I have a good enough relationship that I use the exclamation point with her. With other people above me in the hierarchy, I will usually follow their lead—if they use an exclamation point, I might slip one in, too!
The article seems to have quite a pessimistic (if not pretentious) take on the (over)use of the exclamation point, even referring to those who use them as “linguistically lazy.” Judith Roof, an English professor at Rice University who was quoted in the article, was particularly negative on its usage:
Exclamation points are emphatic, but offer no inclination, affect or meaning other than the superlative. They are loud but neutral. . . . Ultimately and sadly, I think the use of the exclamation point is also linked to the last 15 years' gradual loss of vocabulary, expressive capacity and overall linguistic mastery.
I don’t know about all of that—I’m often skeptical when I hear people lamenting the degradation of language (but what do I know, that’s not my Ph.D. area). But it does seem true that the exclamation point is becoming more ubiquitous than it used to be.
And it’s also true that I will now be overthinking my punctuation even more than I used to, which I’m pretty sure is not a great thing.
What do you want to kibitz about tonight!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?