Oh, no! Exclamation Marks!
Oh, no! Exclamation Marks!
They’ve been with us in modern form since the 15th century but many beginning writers make the mistake of overusing them. Theory has it that the modern mark comes from Latin where the the word ‘io,’ a derivation ‘joy,’ was placed at the end of a sentence to express said emotion. Over time, the ‘i’ moved above the ‘o’ and gradually became smaller and so our modern exclamation mark was born. There are other (mostly unproven) theories including the finding of a pre-historic exclamation mark in a cave in France and what looks like to be an exclamation mark in Egyptian hieroglyphics 5,000 years ago from the time of Cheops. Other theories include derivations from musical notation. A more recent and well researched article puts the origins of the mark down to a system devised by the Egyptian, Aristophanes, in the 3rd century BCE.
As interesting as their provenance may be, exclamation marks should be used sparingly. Many beginning writers’ manuscripts are full of them. The problem with overuse is that they cheapen the writing, turning it into a hysterical tirade. For example, let’s say Javier and Fiona are arguing.
‘Stop!’ she cried.
‘Well, you started it!’ he yelled.
‘That’s it. It’s over!’ she screamed.
See what I mean? It would read much better if, instead of using the words, ‘cried,’ screamed,’ and ‘yelled,’ (there is a place for them but not here) the writer showed us how distressed the parties are.
‘Stop,’ she cried.
She banged down the magazine on the table, knocking over the cup.
‘Well, you started it.’
She could hear the anger in his voice. He stormed out the door. She could hear him yelling, and then she heard the car turning on the gravel. She flung the front door open.
‘That’s it. It’s over!’
Her screams could be heard three houses away.
It is much better for a writer to convey a sense of joy, anger, frustration or other heightened emotions through action and description and internal thoughts rather than rely on an exclamation mark to do the work for you. Don’t write, ‘It was horrible!’ unless this is part of dialogue. Show the reader how horrible is really was. Exclamation marks can make a writer lazy. Think about how you can write a scene without using them. Naturally, if some terrible misfortune has befallen your protagonist, or equally, some amazing news has reached their ears, then there is a place for an exclamation mark. Exclamation marks are also an indicator of volume, not just emotion, so you don’t want your writing to become too loud. If your characters are arguing for two pages with a lot of exclamation marks thrown in the volume will increase inside the readers’ heads and this can become tiresome after a very short time. The reader will become jaded with three pages of Shouty McShouty. They’ll feel battered and exhausted, much like arguments in real life. So, go back to the show don’t tell rule.
Exclamation marks should be avoided in formal writing such as business reports, letters and emails of complaint and formal documents.
Be careful of punctuation. Sometimes people think that because there’s an exclamation mark at the end of somebody’s section of dialogue then there’s no need for speech marks. Make sure that exclamation marks always sit inside quotation marks.
So, like make-up as you age, less is more. Copy that!