I Hate Exclamation Marks! (And Here's Why)

Exclamation marks, oh how I loathe you. Narcissistic excess. Redundant, stylistic baggage. Grammatical abortions. The great reader deceiver. The painted whore. Even your figure pisses me off, demanding my attention by threatening to jump off of the page.

Exclamation marks are generally found at the tail-end of interjections (Hi! Bye! Cheers! Look out! Oh! Wow! Fuck!) and have a bloated way of imbuing a sentence with an undeserved sense of importance.

Writers generally use exclamation marks for one of two reasons:

1. To instill a sense of intensity or urgency
2. To raise the level of energy and excitement

But you know what I say? Exclamation marks are useless.

At this point you may be asking me, "Brad, what the hell is your problem with some friggin' exclamation marks?". Well let me tell you what my problem is.

Firstly, if you construct a proper sentence--that is, if you write well--you will never need to use one. Exclamation marks are like trying to show off your intelligence by donning thick rimmed glasses and chuckling at Kierkegaard over a latte at your local Starbucks, pausing occasionally to explain to the barista your concerns about the national debt. I mean, sure it gets the job done--you might even fool a few people along the way--but it's dishonest, plain and simple. Just as intelligence should be recognized by the content of your character and the value of your statement, so too should a sentence show intensity or excitement through the careful structure of your prose, not by the artificial status of a meaningless accessory.

My greatest concern with exclamation marks is not that they're unnecessary, but that they're insulting to the reader. Here's how:

a) More often than not, you've written a flat sentence and tried to cover it up by tacking an exclamation mark onto the end in order to artificially inflate its significance.

b) You think that the reader is so dense that they cannot identify emphasis, intensity or urgency unless you tell them that you have used it.

Now before you call me on it, let me be the first to admit that I too use exclamation marks from time to time (just read my blog; you'll find this to be true). However, I'm willing to swallow my pride and admit that almost every time I've ever used one it was out of laziness, and a lack of desire to rearrange my sentence so as to properly reflect what I have envisioned in my head. The only time that I intentionally use exclamation marks is when I'm swearing; it's a stylistic habit, and I think it looks cool.

If you disagree with this post you may choose to ignore everything I have written. After all, I'm just another aspiring author with no publication credits to my name. It might be harder to knock this guy down a peg though.

"Cut out all those exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Well dear readers, thank you for indulging me in my little rant. I hope that I was able to clearly convey my hatred of these useless bastards without the need of an exclamation mark.

Now I'm interested in hearing from you. When do you use exclamation marks? Do you ever feel that you overuse them? Am I just being hyper sensitive about a non-issue?

PS: One of these days...I will have to...make a post...about my hatred of...ellipsis over...use...