The rise of the exclamation mark!

I’ve noticed that recently, maybe the past couple of years or so, the exclamation mark; !, is being used pretty much everywhere. It closes so many sentences these days people seem to be writing things in a constant sense of excitement or surprise!

I saw a ‘With sympathy’ card the other day with the sentence “Sorry to hear of your loss!” written in it.

Why?

you don’t mean if IF IT ISN’T LOUD !!!11111llolol

Written language as a form communication is becoming less formal and more colloquial.
It takes skill to convey tone and inflection in ink and paper, so a lot of people use the exclamation mark to compensate(!).

Just my two pennies…

the other day I received an email from a professional source that had

NOT! written in red no less than 10 times in the course of 1/2 a page

very strange LOLKITTENCOPTERS 😀 😯 😛 ➡ 👿 😳

I’m a semi-colon man, me; it’s classy as punctuation goes, but it makes a clear, subtle point.

The exclamation mark is the chav lurking on your keyboard. Beware.

¡OMG! 😯

I have also noticed this. It appears that women are the most profilic offenders. No idea why! 😉

I must confess to using it a fair bit. But only appropriately, and never more than 3 at the end of a sentence.
Should I stop?! ( <<- I do that a lot too)

The best way out of this is to introduce STW ‘Support Grammar’ days. My thinking is we should start with the ellipsis… for extra… tension… and then maybe go on to the colon: a day of lists and sh1t. What say you…?! (dammit).

TBH, I’m more concerned about the full stop being phased out in favour of the ‘lol’.

as a MARK,i take will take all the blame for the mis-use of said !.
Bob Diamond styleee!!!!! 😐

I think it goes hand in hand with the way people ‘talk’ to each other. i.e. They don’t talk, they shout. how many times do you see people walking away from each other shouting louder and louder? Groups of people walking along all shouting to be heard rather than waiting for someone to shut up. Kids shouting. Parents shouting. People on TV shouting etc etc….

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……..

It does my head in too. My older brother uses them all the time, even when they are wholly inappropriate.

Like the months after our mum died. He would text saying things like ‘I can’t believe she’s gone!!!!!!’

Just noticed this thread; a close female friend has a habit of using multiple explanation marks when we chat on iMessage. Part of the problem is that there’s no real way of putting emphasis on words in most electronic communications. You can do it here, of course, but anywhere else you can’t use italics or bold to put emphasis on a statement.
Which is a royal pain in the arse!!! 😀

One of my staff signs off ALL of his e-mails with ‘Thanks!!!!!!’ whether it’s appropriate or not. Really bugs me

One of my staff signs off ALL of his e-mails with ‘Thanks!!!!!!’ whether it’s appropriate or not. Really bugs me

I find a short reply of
No worries.
xxxxx
Puts a quick end to this sort of thing.

there’s no real way of putting emphasis on words in most electronic communications

You can add *emphasis* and even _underline_things_ with creative use of symbols though.

(-:

Ummm…

Oh, BTW, this:

I saw a ‘With sympathy’ card the other day with the sentence “Sorry to hear of your loss!” written in it.

… reminds me of something I wanted to share.

I was working on site in a Lawyers’ office a couple of weeks ago. Whilst sat at one of the desks, I couldn’t help notice one of the documents lying there. The stationery was expensive-looking paper with what I’d guess was a pre-printed company letterhead and footer.

On it was the header page of the document, in fairly large type, which read along the lines of “Final Will and Testament of Carol Smith” and then some smaller text underneath which I didn’t read.

All printed in Comic Sans.

ONEONEONEONE

As for over-use of terms, my ex neighbour puts lol x at the end of every single facebook post.

It makes her sound like some kind of laughing maniac, or at least very drunk.

I! blame! yahoo!
( guess which IT news site i look at from time to time. )!

…. Guilty as charged!!!!!!….