Too many exclamation points!!!

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 19:00:00 +0000

“HEY STEVE!” someone recently emailed me. Both my name and “Hey” were in caps, and all five sentences in the message ended with exclamation points. At first glance I assumed the message was a loved one writing from a plane that was going down. It turned out to be someone I barely knew, discussing minor logistics and thanking me for something that had taken no effort on my part.

I'm not the first to point out that we're in a punctuation arms race in emails and texts. “Thank you!!” people reply, like you just sent them a kidney instead of an invoice.

"See you at 1:00 for the meeting," I type, and then hesitate: If I don't add an exclamation point it sounds like I plan to kill the person when I get there. And yet when someone emails me about a meeting with an exclamation point, I think, “Listen, it's a meeting. The best it could go is that there are bagels. If you are really that excited about it, you're a psycho.”

But I admit: I do it too. I’ll drop an exclamation point or nine in an email or text to smooth the transaction. I do it not because I’m nice but because I’m lazy: Instead of finding the right words I find the "Shift” and the “1" keys. Synthetic excitement explodes out of my cursor, unearned. And I can sound friendly without all the effort of actually being friendly.

Cartoon Saturday: Social priorities of the hipster

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 08:01:00 +0000

Salon.com > Steve Macone

Too many exclamation points!!!

Cartoon Saturday: Social priorities of the hipster