by Michy Lynn

Created on: September 22, 2007

Ah, punctuation!

Without punctuation writing would be most difficult to read we would never know when to pause take a breath or what phrases go with what words the entire meaning of our writing could be corrupted when you don't have commas periods exclamation points questions marks and the like to tell us how we should read something

As you can see from that paragraph above, without punctuation, we would have a hard time reading. Sometimes our mind fills in the gaps for us, but we would have to read it several times to truly understand. Punctuation marks are those little clues that give direction to the reader so we know how read something.

One of the most frequently misused forms of punctuation is the exclamation point or the exclamation mark as some people will call it. As an editor, I have frequently told the authors with whom I work that I am going to remove the exclamation point from their keyboard. Don't get me wrong here, the exclamation point has its place in writing, but it is frequently overused or misused.

The exclamation point is most frequently used in dialogue, and it is usually used to denote a strong command, "Stop!" An exclamation point almost always comes at the end of a sentence, but occasional it can come in the middle when using dialogue that has text tags behind it, such as: He said, "Stop!" before he reached out to grab the file from her hand.

An exclamation point can also be used to indicate shouting. He yelled, "Don't do that!" This makes a stronger impact than without the exclamation point, and clearly indicates that the person was shouting, emphasizing the point.

Exclamation points are also used to denote a surprise or a shock or something that is in some way astonishing or amazing, even when the person is not shouting. "I can't believe he actually jumped out of the airplane!"

When used this way, exclamation points are a very important part of punctuation. However, I have seen two ways or misusing exclamation points in professional fiction writing that one should not do: Multiple Exclamation Points and the Exclamation / Question Combo.

Let's look at multiple exclamation points first:

"I can't believe this happened!"

Many writers believe that multiple exclamation points will indicate that the comment preceding the exclamation point was very important, very loud, or had a lot of emotion behind it. Unfortunately, this is a sign of an amateur writer, and a big tip off to editors in the publishing field that the author is probably inexperienced.

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