The epidemic of exclamation marks

On to what she says in just a moment but first I point out that the Holy Bible and Hansard (the latter the official transcript of the unholy proceedings of our federal parliament) have, eerily, a distinctive something in common. You’ll never guess what it is!!! It is that both of them are sadly bereft of exclamation marks. And yet there is so much impassioned reported speech in biblical events and also in Hansard’s accounts of parliament, that savage ship of fools.

Both books are uncontaminated by the epidemic Ms Beck diagnoses. I have the inspirational King James Bible open at my elbow and an online Hansard of one of last week’s savage Question Times in the House of Representatives on a screen beside me. Back to the Good Book and to the not-so-good books of Hansard in just a moment. First, though, to Ms Beck’s analysis of our punctuation-punctuated times. The chief villain in all this, she fancies, is digital communication.

“How many exclamation points does it take to exclaim something?” she challenges.

“One, a human of sound mind and a decent grasp of punctuation might say. The exclamation point denotes exclamation. That is its point. One should suffice.

“But, on the internet, it often doesn’t. Not any more. Digital communication is undergoing exclamation-point inflation. When single exclamation points adorn every sentence in a business email, it takes two to convey true enthusiasm. Or three. Or four. Or more.

“[These days] I notice … multiple exclamation points popping up in mundane places, not attached to hyperbole or any kind of frenzied emotion. A simple work email might yield a “Sounds good!!!” I find myself doing it, too.

“It wasn’t so long ago that a single exclamation point still felt extreme … at journalism school, I was told that you get one exclamation point to use in your whole career, so you should use it wisely. You could perhaps spend your one exclamation point on a headline like “WAR OVER!” but nothing else would merit one.”

The thought of only being allowed one exclamation mark to use in my whole journalistic career leaves me ashen-faced. It is like being allowed, say, one cigarette, one glass of wine, one kiss in a lifetime. Almost everyone, everywhere, does some exclaiming when they speak. How is a good reporter to faithfully report the often passionate conversation of mankind without using exclamation marks?

Ms Beck quotes, approvingly, the writer Elmore Leonard’s rule for writing fiction which was, “You are allowed no more than two or three [exclamation marks] per 100,000 words of prose.”

Gadzooks! Caramba! Stone the crows! Leonard must be joking!!! As a sometimes passionate newspaper columnist (for example, often building up a head of steam of enthusiasm for my dashing little city and heads of steam of wrath at life’s injustices), my mind is often genuinely doing lots of exclaiming. Without exclamation marks, those tub-thumpings can be mistaken for things muttered under the breath, for polite whispers.

It will sound blasphemous but I do think that the King James Bible, beautiful as its language is, is sadly under-punctuated. Surely, when Goliath “cries” [shouts] his taunts at the people of Israel, daring them to find someone to fight him, one or two exclamation marks are called for? Without them his shouts read too much like polite invitations, as if he is asking “I say you Israel chaps, anyone for tennis?”

And without exclamation marks, the God of the bible, though famous for his many spasms of wrath, never appears to raise His mighty voice. How implausible is that??!! And the under-punctuation of Hansard quite distorts what happens in parliament. I follow Question Time in the House of Representatives and so know it to be a wild, noisy, brute of a thing. There is little civility and almost nothing is just spoken, conversationally. Almost everything is loudly howled, shouted, snarled, spat or chortled. Almost everything is exclaimed, really.

I say this not to condemn it (for the brutish tone of Question Time, though sometimes shameful, is an authentically Australian cacophony). No, I just want to say, Ms Beck having raised the subject of exclamation marks (her piece is terrific! do read it!), how a Hansard without exclamation marks is a book of faked debates.

Ms Beck abhors the modern superabundance of exclamation marks but she is an honest reporter of the trend. She can see the future coming. She ends her piece by quoting one young scholar who welcomes the use of exclamation marks as expressions of joy, of enthusiasm. “Sometimes in place of a statement,” he enthuses to Ms Beck, “I’ll just send a bunch of exclamation [marks] in response to someone, with no words … just to denote pure excitement or pure joy.”

Yes, get ready passionate columnists! When next we get the chance to write columns greeting something as wonderful as the impeachment of Donald Trump or Australia becoming a republic, let us dispense with words altogether and type a crowd, a host, of golden exclamation marks!!!