All about the "!"

I'm not a big user of exclamation points. They feel like the literary equivalent of someone grabbing your arm mid-sentence to shout this matters, pay attention, I’m excited, you should be too! It’s a bit desperate.

Maybe I’ve just been online too long. Everything’s urgent there and the exclamation point has been drafted into service like a cheap confetti cannon: loud, disposable, and mostly covering up the fact that not much actually happened.

As a writer, I’d rather earn the feeling. If something’s funny, let it land. If it’s sharp, let it cut. Slapping an exclamation point at the end seems like an unnecessary short cut. Good writing, trusts the reader to meet it halfway, without all the waving and shouting.

I’m not saying ban them. I use one now and then, like hot sauce. But if every sentence needs a kick, maybe the problem isn’t punctuation. Maybe the writing’s just bland. 

So, I think word processors need a function that only allows one exclamation point to be used every 50,000 keystrokes and I encourage someone more technical that me to build an app that, when you read an exclamation point online, an "applause" sign will appear and flash.

And like author F. Scott Fitzgerald, many writers are very opinionated about this punctuation mark:

I bet when all the punctuation marks have a party, they quietly look at exclamation point's wife and think, that poor woman. – Dana Gould

Never trust an exclamation point. – Linda Urban

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. – Terry Pratchett

In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly. – Lynne Truss

People complain about my exclamation points, but I honestly think that's the way people think. I don't think people think in essays; it's one exclamation point to another. – Tom Wolfe

In almost all situations that do not involve immediate physical danger or great surprise, you should think twice before using an exclamation mark. If you have thought twice and the exclamation mark is still there, think about it three times, or however many times it takes until you delete it. –Howard Mittelmark,

So far as good writing goes, the use of the exclamation mark is a sign of failure. It is the literary equivalent of a man holding up a card reading LAUGHTER to a studio audience. – Miles Kington

 Most of us were trained to distrust the exclamation point—at worst, to hate its cheery, unhinged energy. - Ann Handley 

An excessive use of exclamation marks is a certain indication of an unpractised writer or of one who wants to add a spurious dash of sensation to something unsensational. – Henry Watson Fowler

Never use three exclamation points when one will do. – Christine Edwards

And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. – Terry Pratchett

Only one thing more mortifying than having an exclamation mark removed by an editor: an exclamation mark added in. – Lynne Truss

Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. – Elmore Leonard

The exclamation point is a loud party-goer, demanding attention. Overdone, it can be annoying. – James Scott Bell 

Even the lauded TV show Seinfeld weighed in on the exclamation point:

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DEFINITION: The exclamation mark, !, also sometimes referred to as the exclamation point, is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks the end of a sentence, for example: "Watch out!". Similarly, a bare exclamation mark (with nothing before or after) is often established in warning signs.

The exclamation mark is often used in writing to make a character seem as though they are shouting and/or excited/surprised. It can also be used in fiction writing for a person who is doing the same thing but in real life. 

Overuse results in the loss of the excitement or urgency it represents.