{"id":535,"date":"2012-05-12T09:17:42","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T21:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=535"},"modified":"2012-05-14T09:30:57","modified_gmt":"2012-05-13T21:30:57","slug":"please-stop-screaming-at-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=535","title":{"rendered":"Please stop screaming at me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The dog barked at the postie!!!!!<\/em><\/p>\n

See what I did there?\u00a0 I took a perfectly ordinary, unremarkable sentence and made it really<\/em> exciting by adding a row of exclamation marks.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe not really<\/em> exciting.\u00a0 In fact, not even a little bit exciting.\u00a0 Dogs bark at posties every day.\u00a0 And the addition of a row of exclamation marks doesn\u2019t change that.<\/p>\n

Until about 35 years ago, typewriters \u2013 the forerunners to computer keyboards, for those who weren\u2019t around in those days \u2013 didn\u2019t have a separate key for the exclamation mark.\u00a0 If you wanted to type an exclamation mark, you had to first type a full stop (or a period, if you were in North America), carefully backspace, and then type an apostrophe above it.\u00a0 Frankly, it was all a bit of a palaver.\u00a0 And I\u2019m sure that it encouraged writers to think a little more carefully about whether the exclamation mark was really necessary.\u00a0 Was it really going to add anything to the communication?\u00a0 Or was it just going to be a slightly distracting ornament at the end of the sentence?<\/p>\n

These days, of course, adding an exclamation mark \u2013 or five \u2013 is as easy as slipping in a capital letter.\u00a0 And, yes, there are times when an exclamation mark can be useful.\u00a0 But, most of the time, it still doesn\u2019t add anything useful to the communication.\u00a0 Most of the time it just gets in the way.<\/p>\n

Fowler\u2019s Modern English Usage suggests that \u2018excessive use of exclamation marks in expository prose is a certain indication of an unpractised writer or one who wants to add a spurious dash of sensation to something unsensational.\u2019<\/p>\n

Among editors of a certain age, exclamation marks are sometimes known as screamers.\u00a0 I remember one editor who, whenever he received a piece of copy with exclamation marks used ill-advisedly, would return the copy to the writer with a hand-written note saying: \u2018I will be happy to consider this piece when you stop screaming at me.\u2019<\/p>\n

A not-unreasonable offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dog barked at the postie!!!!! See what I did there?\u00a0 I took a perfectly ordinary, unremarkable sentence and made it really exciting by adding a row of exclamation marks. Well, maybe not really exciting.\u00a0 In fact, not even a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":539,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions\/539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}