This week’s post is about another abused punctuation symbol—the exclamation mark (or exclamation point as it’s known in the USA).

In our email/text/facebook world, exclamation marks are no longer loners—they now hunt in packs, causing peace-loving sentences to arch their backs, look big, and sound intimidating in some way. A large number of people now call the symbol a “bang”, adding to the intimidatory nature of the beasts.
If these instant communications were to be set using lead type, the exclamation mark tray would need to be the largest of the entire font. (And yes, I appreciate that if lead type were used, the communications could hardly be called “instant”.)

The Dangers of Purism

If I wanted to take a purist’s position, I would stamp my (not so) little feet and exclaim, “it’s an exclamation mark—it’s to show when a statement is intended to be exclaimed!”
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines exclaim thus: cry out suddenly, especially in anger, surprise, pain, etc. Webster’s mentions strong emotion and protest. My much older dictionaries add delight to the mix. The purist’s argument would therefore be that warnings (“Danger!”) and texts (“cu latuh!!!!”) are not exclamations and should not be marked thus.

Remember though, that in all things where opinions are involved, we adopt the high ground at our peril. The purist view is a restricted one, and a subjective one too. That high ground might just be located on top of a sink-hole-in-the-making. In the current context, that sink hole is another definition of “exclamation”; a sudden impassioned or emphatic utterance; a cry. There—“emphatic”. That gets us off the hook for “Danger!” and “cu latuh!” (although it doesn’t justify the rest of the pack of bangs).

The “Ba-dum-ksh” Mark

Many writers use the exclamation mark to emphasize something they think might get missed, much like the drum-cymbal sound used after the punch line of a joke.

“I say, I say, I say. My dog hasn’t got a nose.” | “How does it smell?” | “Terrible.” (ba-dum-ksh).

What would we think of Mark Twain if he had added a ba-dum-ksh to “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”?

As F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, “…an exclamation point [he was American] is like laughing at your own joke.”

Such emphasis is never appropriate in business writing.

Never say “never”, Reg. It might not be completely out of place in a script for a light-hearted business presentation.

Help

(If you’re too young and/or insular to have heard of The Beatles, you may want to skip this section.)

How did that last heading sound in your head as you read it? A little flaccid, perhaps? I’m not sure if that’s what Mr. Lennon intended.

Help!

How did that sound? I thought so!

This simple example proves that the exclamation mark is invaluable as an intensifier or emphasizer.

Help!!!!!!!!!!!

How did that sound? If you answered, “ridiculous” or “no different from ‘Help!’”, you’re right (in my eyes, at least.) To extend the loner/pack analogy, the exclamation mark is a lone wolf—it needs no assistance.

¡Socorro!

The Spanish language has this neat convention of starting an exclamatory phrase or sentence with an upside-down exclamation mark—a similar convention exists for questions. This, for me, is an attractive feature for English to borrow—it provides the reader with advanced warning that he or she is about to read an exclamation (or question).

This convention does have me wondering though—do Spanish teenagers type ¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Cool!!!!!!!?

The Interrobang

I discovered this symbol (‽) and its name relatively recently, even though it’s been around since the early 1960s. As the name implies, it is a combination of an exclamation mark and a question mark. It has a unicode value (U+203D ) and it is present in a number of typefaces. I cannot think of a use for it in business writing, but for creative writing, it might be a novelty, although I’m also happy to use “?!” or “!?” when the need arises.

Also, there’s no easy or quick way to type it, a disability it shared with the exclamation mark at one time. As recently as the 1960s, many typewriters had no “!” key—if a person wished to create one, he or she had type a single quotation mark (they weren’t slanted), then backspace and type a period. Imagine having to do that on your smartphone—I suspect the pack of bangs might become an endangered species in that circumstance.

Bang in Business

The “!” symbol is much used in many programming and scripting languages to mean “not”. In HTML, the “<!–” sequence indicates the beginning of a comment. In Excel formulae, when referring to cells on another sheet, “!”separates the sheet name from the cell reference.

In mathematics, the symbol is used to note “factorial” (e.g., 4! = 4x3x2x1=24).

There are many other uses of the “!” in the IT side of business, but presentation scripts aside, its general business writing applications are limited.

That last sentence betrays my opinion of sales and marketing. Using upper case, bold, red lettering and vomiting exclamation marks over the advert is not “writing” in my opinion. I will concede that it’s a skill in its own right (much like splattering a canvas with a miscellany of different-coloured paints) and that advertisers have to do something to make their ads drown out their competitors’ adverts, but I cannot dignify that skill with the term “business writing”.

More !4your$

The most prolific users of the exclamation mark are, of course, those who communicate via texts and social media. Whether it’s a pack of bangs following “wicked” or “cool” or “hot” or whatever this week’s superlative is, or using “!” instead of the word “bang”, the “!” key gets a lot of use.

Being Emphatic

There are other, more professional ways to emphasize words, phrases or sentences than letting the bangs loose. Italicizing is one. Underlining is another. Bolding is a third.
Wait—doesn’t MS Word have buttons (and shortcuts) for those? Whereas it doesn’t have a button that releases a pack of bangs on a helpless sentence?

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) even has an “<em>” tag to allow emphasis to be added. I don’t recall that tag having the ability to add a pack of bangs to end of the text.

By the way—all caps is not emphasis—IT’S SHOUTING! (And is usually followed by an exclamation mark anyway.)

Also, remember that if you emphasize everything, you’ve emphasized nothing. This is (I feel sure) the problem that advertisement artists constantly fight.

The Long and Short

If you’re writing technical documents, resist the temptation to use the exclamation mark unless

• You’re reproducing programming or scripting code segments.
• You’re writing documents that require warnings (but even then, think carefully—will “WARNING!” more reliably attract the reader’s attention than “WARNING”?)
• You’re writing a document about the use of exclamation marks.

If it’s emphasis you want to add to a word, phrase or sentence, use one of the standard techniques – bold, underline, or italics.

Please Help Improve Yonder Pedant’s Ramblings

• Did I miss a typo? (I’ll feel bad when you tell me, but I’d rather you did tell me!)
• Did I write something that makes you want to turn green and burst out of your shirt?
• Do you have any better examples that you would share and allow me to use?

If so, please let me know by leaving a comment.