Relax, please. No exclamation points were harmed in the production of this column.
In fact, this might be the only thing you'll ever read about exclamation points that doesn't actually contain one. I believe that Sunday should be a day of rest for the overworked punctuation mark, the one I like to call "the period in a party hat."
Last week The Wall Street Journal featured an excellent article by Katherine Bindley under the headline: "The Tyranny of the Exclamation Point " The essence of the piece was in the subhead: "We have become addicted to the exclamation point in emails and texts."
Lordy, yes.
Nowadays, young people think you are being mean or insensitive if you don't pepper your texts and emails with exclamation points. A mere period at the end of an upbeat sentence is considered rude.
Mark KennedyExcuse me, but this is mass hysteria.
Every time I see an exclamation point, I want to pound it down with a hammer. This becomes expensive when you are dealing with computer screens.
Hopefully, things will begin to cool down soon.
When I was a young man, the exclamation point was a back-of-the-drawer tool that you only pulled out for special jobs. I think a good rule of thumb is you should use an exclamation point about as often as you throw confetti.
I once told a young reporter to stop using exclamation points in her copy. In fact, I gave her a book of paper matches and told her they represented her lifetime supply of exclamation points. Every time she used an exclamation point, she was to remove one of the matches and toss it away.
"Then, when they are gone, they're gone, kid," I said.
I hope our talk lives on in her mental archive of "crazy-things-editors-have-said." All journalists keep such a mental log. For instance, I once heard an editor caution someone, "Don't turn a deaf eye to that."
Professional writers and editors have a reverence for punctuation that borders on obsession. There are anguished debates about proliferation of long dashes in place of commas. Locally, whether or not to hyphenate Choo-Choo in Chattanooga Choo-Choo was the subtext of a long-running copy-desk civil war.
But back to today's topic: the exclamation reclamation.
Consider that the exclamation point might actually be embarrassed by its current misappropriation. It is easily the most emotionally fragile punctuation mark we have. What other symbol is so prone to hysterics, so riddled with anxiety, so predictive of swear words and tears?
Pity the poor exclamation point. After all the overuse, it may require years of therapy to regroup. What if it turns out that an exclamation point is really just a question mark with an eating disorder? How will you all feel then, people? Ashamed, I hope.
Alas, I fear the population will not easily give up its exclamation point addiction. In the words of the poet: "Turn down for what?"
A life without exclamation points would no doubt be chilling to some people.
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Sometimes, I think I'd like to lock a bunch of real estate copy writers in a room with no exclamation points and watch them descend into madness: "Gorgeous view. Brand new roof. Award-winning schools."
See? Painful, isn't it?
Still, part of me fears that the worst is yet to come. What if the exclamation point is just a gateway drug to a vastly more diabolical addiction: ALL CAPS.
OMG, DELIVER US FROM THAT EVIL.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.