Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The dreaded exclamation mark
Aside from the occasional breaking-news email (containing announcements of a pregnancy, engagement, new job or the incredible sandwich you ate at lunch), leave the exclamation marks out of your written work. "!" rarely has a place in a newspaper headline or within the subtitles of a foreign documentary. And there is absolutely no more room for exclamation marks to be plastered on my Facebook wall.
The Canadian Press Stylebook says, "Do not overuse this strong mark of punctuation."* It can be used to denote great surprise (Oh my!), a command (Run!), deep emotion (I'm so angry!), emphasis (It's mine!) and sarcasm (Puh-lease!). There are many other uses for the exclamation mark but I won't get into that just yet.
In most cases, if your sentence doesn't portray the proper amount of excitement, change your vocabulary, not your punctuation.
A former journalism colleague, who is known to cringe at the sight of "!", once told me that everyone gets one exclamation mark per professional career. I haven't used mine yet — unless you count the seven in this entry.
Acceptable:
*Canadian Press Stylebook 16th Edition, page 386
The Canadian Press Stylebook says, "Do not overuse this strong mark of punctuation."* It can be used to denote great surprise (Oh my!), a command (Run!), deep emotion (I'm so angry!), emphasis (It's mine!) and sarcasm (Puh-lease!). There are many other uses for the exclamation mark but I won't get into that just yet.
In most cases, if your sentence doesn't portray the proper amount of excitement, change your vocabulary, not your punctuation.
A former journalism colleague, who is known to cringe at the sight of "!", once told me that everyone gets one exclamation mark per professional career. I haven't used mine yet — unless you count the seven in this entry.
Acceptable:
*Canadian Press Stylebook 16th Edition, page 386
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