The Tired, Overused Exclamation Point – And Other Excesses

I’ll bet I’m not the only one who gets emails that start like this:

“Hi Eli! I hope this email finds you well! I have great news! I just accepted a job offer! I start in two weeks! Thanks for your help!” The subject line also contained an exclamation point, as if six at the beginning weren’t enough. Never mind the type of sender who thinks one isn’t sufficient at sentence’s end: five, maybe more, are called for.

Mr. John Planell, my seventh and eighth grade English teacher in Mount Vernon, NY in the 1950s – and leading candidate for greatest teacher I ever had – would have none of that, as there were, he taught us, far more erudite, diverse, nimble, and effective methods of emphasis.

But the exclamation point has not only lived on; it has proliferated. That two-piece punctuation mark is all over the place, and when this year’s emergence of trillions of cicadas bursts forth, it will not outnumber the promiscuous point.

Mr. Planell taught us to style our writing so that our words, not our marks, packed the power. How many explanation points are needed in the Ten Commandments, for example? You’re just not going to add any force to “Thou shalt not kill” by adding that upright Philistine sentry that, in this case, does nothing at all. Come to think of it, I’ll bet the whole Bible – both testaments – written by hundreds of hands over the centuries – hasn’t got one. Nor does the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, or JFK’s inaugural speech. OK, so we’ll find them in Longfellow’s poetry, but that titan of Romanticism is beyond reproach, and did it naturally. We mortals can only try.

Why do we do this? From what is borne this overindulgence? What need are we filling? I submit there are two answers. First, we have, as a society, abandoned good reading and, as a result, good writing. I taught two graduate-level leadership and communication courses for 15 years at Fairleigh Dickinson University, with students from undergraduate programs all over the country plus students from 65 countries, and I have seen an alarmingly precipitous drop in writing skills. It’s chilling. (I could have used the exclamation point here, right?)

Second, it’s easy. There it is, that tempting mark, perched atop the 1-key on our PCs and commanding its own key on our phones, just waiting to weigh in. And along with the convenience, there’s little or no accountability for its use. It’s there, right? It saves time and thought, two precious commodities we just don’t have enough of. (If you don’t like the preposition where it is, please see my March 21 article in www.forbes.com – Prepositions Are Now OK To End Sentences With.)

Five years after Mr. Planell started turning me into a writer, I found myself in Professor Jack Beaton’s freshman writing class at FDU. On one of my earliest submissions, a couple of my exclamation points were crossed out in red and Professor Beaton wrote a note I wish I had saved, but what do freshmen know? I remember it said things like “What good are those exclamation points doing?” and “You can do so much more with adverbs, sentences of varying lengths, and exciting, well thought out synonyms.”

What, then, would that email, the one at the top of this column, look like if the sender knew Mr. Planell and Professor Beaton? Here’s an offering.

“Hi, Eli. [Note the comma, missing above.] Hoping you’re well, I’m writing to share exciting and long-awaited news. I’ve accepted the offer for Senior Manager, Eastern Region for which you helped me prep. I’ll be starting in two weeks and would like to stop by to take you to lunch to say thanks properly.” Not one exclamation point. No loss of power.

And no, I didn’t make up the lunch part; I just omitted it at the beginning.

Now then, apply this lesson to the bold, underscore, and italic temptations – not to mention emojis – and you’ve really got something! (Apologies.)