Good people use exclamation marks! The rest of you are jerks
In this column, we deliver hot (and cold) takes on pop culture, judging whether a subject is overrated or underrated.
By Robert Moran
If grammar had a halo, it would look like a vertical line with a dot underneath. A skinny lady standing on her head. A haunted baseball bat floating over, um, an orange?
Look, it would look like this: ! Let us kneel and pray at the altar of the exclamation mark, the holiest of punctuations.
We’re all just trying to get through our days. Exclamation marks make it nicer!Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
There it is, so undeniably perky, at the end of every sentence in my emails and texts. “Hi! Hope you’re well! Thanks for sending over the pictures! They look great!”
“My pleasure!” the other kind person will reply. “Glad you like them! Speak soon!”
From a distance, it looks like a conversation between two mental cases over the wires of the local looney bin. It’s a psychotic amount of exclamation marks, some might say. It’s overly enthusiastic. Needy, even. But what’s the alternative?
“Hi, hope you’re well. Thanks for sending over the pictures. They look great.”
“My pleasure. Glad you like them. Speak soon.”
It reads like sarcasm. Or undiagnosed depression. If these are the options, good people will always err on the side of over-friendly lunacy. Debasing ourselves for your comfort, this is what we do. Exclamation marks are an act of extreme kindness.
And yet for years now, exclamation marks have become a joke, punctuation’s equivalent of vocal fry. We purveyors are looked on as tacky and unserious, unprofessional and dumb. The exclamation-averse mock us with their dry grammar, openly suspicious of our overly emotive writing. “Why are you yelling at me!” they’ll say. “I’m not yelling!” we’ll reply, redundantly.
It wasn’t always this way. Exclamation marks were once beloved! Turn to any random page in Ulysses or Pride and Prejudice and you’ll count more exclamation marks than on a mid-’00s blogspot. It wasn’t that long ago that something like “!!!!11111!!!11!” was considered a perfectly reasonable comment on a photo of, like, a friend’s baby.
Now in our Xanny-addled culture, deadpan reigns supreme. The enthusiasm that exclamation marks present feels cringe. I don’t like this!
Look around: where once we had a band like Los Campesinos! triumphantly singing You! Me! Dancing!, now every musician’s called, like, @ or O. with songs titled im like why. Where once we had Panic! At the Disco, NZ legends Die! Die Die!, and a whole band named just !!!, now the only musician legitimately repping for exclamation marks is Chappell Roan, who currently owns both of the only exclamation marks in the ARIA Top 50 Singles chart, for Good Luck Babe! and Hot To Go!.
There are more parentheses on the chart – A Bar Song (Tipsy) by Shaboozey; We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love) by Ariana Grande; Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma (From Twisters: The Album) by Luke Combs – than exclamation marks, which is a sad indication of our collective state. We’re all mumbled, bracketed asides instead of definitive, forceful exclamations! (And yes, I judge the state of the world via the pop charts, what do you use?)
How did we get here, to this fallow period for the exclamation mark? I blame emojis, I guess. Too many other visual options, like that one with the cat doing Munch’s scream.
Also, people are well over yelling ’cause yelling’s everywhere: in the news, on the TV, in politics, through that shared wall where you can hear your neighbours. The exclamation mark is, understandably, a trigger now. The ultimate symbol for a world in perpetual freefall. It’s frantic and loud, when we just want some calm and quiet.
I get it. But I still believe. In emails and Whatsapp messages, mostly among distant acquaintances and professional colleagues, the exclamation mark can be reborn for the greater good. When I say “I hope you’re well!” or “Thanks so much!”, we both know I don’t mean it like that. But it’s polite to pretend. It’s polite, you jerks!
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