I know a physician who ends every e-Mail sentence with an exclamation mark! Not sure if this is meant to make things seem more exciting! Or even dramatic??!!! I read that this makes people seem warmer! Also slightly stupid??!!! Who does this??? Do you know anyone with a similar deficiency?!! Tell me!
I freaking hate exclamation marks. I once read that they should never be used for anything less significant than the end of the world.
I’ve also heard them described as the written version of laughing at your own joke.
mmm
Why do you want to know?
Do you feel superior to people who use unnecessary punctuation marks?
Is it worse than composing one-sentence paragraphs?
Can you express your feelings further on this matter?
I’m guessing they aren’t even aware of it and have slipped the bonds of proper punctuation by accident. You might be doing them a favor by point-blank asking them.
I’ve seen a number of people—including a couple on this board—who separate all sentences with ellipses. They also generally tend to write in giant, stream-of-consciousness blocks of text that express borderline incoherent thoughts and ideas. Unsurprisingly, they also tend to hold conspiranoic, anti-intellectual, bigoted, or otherwise ignorant ideas and positions, so when I see this kind of punctuation it is a warning sign of things to come.
Stranger
it may just be an expression of individualism, like people who habitually post or send e-mails in lower case.
personally i find that irritating.
unless of course their keyboard is busted.
The Extra Effort Involved In Capitalizing Each Word As If The Entire Message Is A Title Must Be Considered When Analyzing The Seriousness Of The Subject Matter
(!)
“The single exclamation mark is being used not as an intensity marker, but as a sincerity marker,” says Gretchen McCulloch, a linguist who studies online communication. “If I end an email with ‘Thanks!,’ I’m not shouting or being particularly enthusiastic; I’m just trying to convey that I’m sincerely thankful, and I’m saying it with a bit of a social smile.”
I just finished weeks of editing almost 100 pages of My mom’s autobiography and she … loves . … . them . . because the ellipses weren’t always three dots. Dot,space,dotdot,spacedotspace and later just Dotspacedotdot, then Spacedotdotdotspacedotspacedot.
Some people simply take punctuation cues from their friends — mostly from exchanged text messages. Exclamation points indicate excitement and enthusiasm, so they use a lot of them. If they ever had a teacher tell them to use !! sparingly, the lesson didn’t stick, or they thought it only applied to school lessons.
I take punctuation cues from books, magazines, teachers, friends, and various websites. Every bang receives 10 seconds of contemplation — it’s actually exciting to compose a sentence that deserves an exclamation point.
To be clear, the above is a requote from The Atlantic, not from @Andy_L.
I swear to God, some linguists are worse than some sociologists for just making things up. The exclamation mark in “Thank you!” is an indicator of enthusiasm, just as in many other instances of its use, which I suppose can be interpreted as “sincerity”, but it’s more than that – it’s a signifier of a high degree of appreciation. Most importantly, this use is no different from any other use as an expressive intensifier.
The problem with using it excessively is the same as the problem of using any other intensifying device often and gratuitously: it loses its impact. It’s like sending every email with a status of “high urgency” (which, incidentally, in Microsoft Outlook uses an exclamation mark as a flag). Eventually no one pays attention, or is just annoyed.
I obviously can’t discern the motivations of the physician cited in the OP who apparently uses it constantly, but perhaps he’s a narcissist who considers everything he writes so notable that it deserves a special “pay attention!” flag. But there could be many other reasons, including illiteracy.
That disturbs me even more. Dammit, ellipses are three dots. You can’t even be incoherent properly?
Testing… check it out, the board software fixes two-dot ellipses. I just wrote two dots that turned into three. Who knew?
Explanation markers are drama kings and queens! Banish them!!!
Colon markers are: posers, the overly-fastidious, and organization freaks.
Are question markers clueless? I believe so, don’t you?
Forward slashers are pretentious gits and/or jackasses.
Em dashers are boors who emphasize stupid points—they suck!
Me? I’m a semi-colon dude; I just flow easy peasy nice and easy.
Or comic books, where every sentence ends with !
Or they’re a cockroach using a typewriter…or keyboard where the caps lock won’t stay on!
(sorry, I couldn’t resist the punctuation!!!)
I’m an exclamation mark user. I sometimes employ smilies, too. I began using them both as a way to communicate sincerity and enthusiasm in short business emails when people were just getting used to email and found its terse nature a little offputting. I try to use them sparingly, but I’m sure it gets on some people’s nerves.
I’ve kept many of my clients for nearly 30 years, so I guess they do perceive me as sincere and enthusiastic. (!!!)
You and your girlfriend have some serious issues.
A regular expression can find all of those, and make it easier to replace them all.
That was Celine’s style, and he was antisemitic, so you may have something there.
If the physician in question literally never uses a period, then it’s clearly deliberate. But if it just feels like every sentence ends in an exclamation point because they use them so often, it could be just a tic that they either aren’t aware of, or don’t want to take the time to fix.
Overuse of exclamation points in email is one of my tics, despite the fact I dislike them. I’m aware of my tic and I generally go back and annihilate them before I hit “send.” I will permit myself one exclamation point per email, if the enthusiasm it suggests is genuine.
The people who write our announcements and marketing material use far too many exclamation points. I’ve suggested as a general piece of advice to tone them down, but I leave a lot of it alone when material is passed to me for approval before being sent out. So we frequently publish text along the lines of, “Starting next Wednesday - a new ceramics class with everyone’s favorite teacher Ellen! And the cost is only $50! Sign up now to reserve your spot!”
I leave it alone because I don’t want to dishearten the people doing the writing and that kind of overheated writing feels somewhat justifiable when the text is basically advertising copy. I don’t like it, though.