Sometimes I wish there was something in between a period and an exclamation point. A calmer, softer piece of punctuation that says: “yes, this is good news and I’m quite happy about it…but it’s not a ‘jumping out of my chair’ kind of happy and that’s perfectly all right.” Like many other people, I go for the double exclamation for anything genuinely exciting, preserving the multiple exclamation for times when there’s truly cause to lose my shit. But the solitary exclamation point, it’s only really good for salutations or commands–abrupt bursts of energy. For subtle congratulations or general happy tidings, it can’t help but come off as alternatively half-assed and insincere.
But what can you do? Subbing in a simple period just looks sarcastic, and I’d really like to preserve the double exclamation’s punch. Like compliments, I’d rather not give them out lightly. Finally, unlike the bracketed question mark (which I think is rather effective), the bracketed exclamation just seems wishy-washy.
Emoticons are just cheating, and like an unprecedented amount of other technological innovations, are surprisingly primitive–like sketchings on a cave wall. Furthermore, they reduce feelings to caricature; there’s no depth, range or subtlety. I’ll admit, I do use them in correspondence, but only because I’ve been in far too many unnecessary msn quarrels when someone failed for whatever reason to understand my sarcasm.
The truth is that some people have absolutely no understanding that writing is just like talking: you can’t just put words down on a page; effective communication is about structure and weight. Just as speech is as much about tone as words, writing is equally shaped by grammar and punctuation. Punctuation has personality: the period–brief, certain, to the point; the comma–active, rambling; the colon–all business; the semi-colon–rational and self-confident with just a hint of vulnerability; the dash–vague and imaginative, but a little flustered all the same.
The people who don’t understand these issues are the ones who end up writing entire sentences, paragraphs, pages all in caps. ALWAYS SCREAMING, ALL THE TIME. If this is you, stop it. Just stop it. Now. Everybody, EVERYBODY hates it, everyone you know is judging you for it (up to and including your best friend, your worst enemy, the boy/girl across the classroom who just never seems to notice you in “that way”, people who normally make it a rule not to judge, and your mother), and you may not realize this (hell, they may not realize this), but they would all like you just a teensy bit better if you wrote like a calm, rational human being. Besides, it’s very rude. I don’t care who you are; nobody deserves to be yelled at indiscriminately. Personally, if someone is going to be constantly shouting at me, I’d actually rather it be verbal than written because at least then that person might realize how ridiculous they look.
