'I like low tones, polite enthusiasm, courteous complaints."
April 2, 2018 9:28 PM Subscribe

Author Elena Ferrante: I make an effort, at least in the artificial universe that is delineated by writing, never to exaggerate with an exclamation mark. Of all the punctuation marks, it’s the one I like the least. It suggests a commander’s staff, a pretentious obelisk, a phallic display.

Editor Elaine Benes: I disagree, I really disagree!
posted by Johnny Wallflower (70 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite

(h/t Room 641-A for the Seinfeld clips)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:29 PM on April 2, 2018

She sounds like someone I wouldn’t want to converse with anyway so...

Wonder what she thinks of the overused ellipsis?
posted by greermahoney at 9:54 PM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

You're allowed one exclamation mark per million words. Make it count!
posted by Phssthpok at 10:27 PM on April 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

I used to have this opinion; that one should avoid the mark at all costs. Then I realized it help convey enthusiasm in email, and use it occasionally now. I feel like the example in the article was a bit unfair though; use of one exclamation mark is warranted occasionally. Use of multiple exclamation marks should end roughly at middle school - it is a sign of potential madness.

Occasionally I will read a piece of investigative journalism that the Guardian does and then see a plea for some cash at the end of it and think, "yeah, I should give them some money." After reading this article, my sentiment was, "wait, the Guardian published this, seriously?"

In summary, the overall sentiment that the exclamation point is overused is a good one, one should use restraint in its use, and never more than one in a row. But overall? Elena is wrong!
posted by el io at 11:21 PM on April 2, 2018

The deuce you say. What the hell.
posted by happyroach at 11:37 PM on April 2, 2018 [15 favorites]

'Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.'

Multiple Discworld spoilers in that link!!!!!
posted by Pendragon at 11:37 PM on April 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

Those are apostrophes (not quotation marks) in the headline.
On further perusal, I see grammar errors galore.
I notice that this is a translation though; so not sure what to think.
posted by CrowGoat at 12:02 AM on April 3, 2018

The first rule of internet punctuation drama is that whenever you criticize someone else’s punctuation, your criticism will inevitably include some other misuse of punctuation;
posted by chavenet at 12:05 AM on April 3, 2018 [31 favorites]

In modern-day communication, the exclamation point, when used correctly, is kind of like a text version of Phone Voice, and should be granted at least that minor leniency.
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:13 AM on April 3, 2018 [10 favorites]

Also, the mismatch of single-quote and double-quote in the post title is making me itchy all over my whole body
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:14 AM on April 3, 2018 [7 favorites]

I notice that this is a translation though; so not sure what to think.

My first thought when I got to the end and saw that: this wasn't even written in them language it's being read in! Hell, it might not even have been written about the language we're reading it in.
posted by Dysk at 12:15 AM on April 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

Single quotation marks are perfectly acceptable in British English.

'Use single quotation marks for direct speech or a quote, and double quotation marks for direct speech or a quote within that.' University of Oxford Style Guide
posted by Helga-woo at 1:12 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

(single quotes are particularly appropriate when nesting quotes [eg: Jane went on about what annoyed Jon "So he says to me 'quit nesting punctuation, you asshat'"])
posted by el io at 1:42 AM on April 3, 2018 [14 favorites]

> Single quotation marks are perfectly acceptable in British English.

And both at once is the OP demonstrating the sort of transcontinental cultural awareness that we need more of!
posted by ardgedee at 1:54 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Then I realized it help convey enthusiasm in email, and use it occasionally now.

That's something like the way I go. I cannot make myself use a smiley face, but I can write "thanks!" when I need to approximate enthusiasm.
posted by pracowity at 2:04 AM on April 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

Total number of exclamation marks in the major novels of Jane Austen:
Exclamation marks in Sense & Sensibility: 561
Exclamation marks in Pride & Prejudice: 499
Exclamation marks in Mansfield Park: 496
Exclamation marks in Emma: 1063
Exclamation marks in Northhanger Abbey: 433
Exclamation marks in Persuasion: 318
Exclamation marks in Lady Susan: 78

Number of words per exclamation mark in the major novels of Jane Austen:
Mansfield Park: 322
Lady Susan: 295
Persuasion: 277
Pride and Prejudice: 242
Sense and Sensibility: 213
Northanger Abbey: 180
Emma: 147
posted by Cantdosleepy at 2:23 AM on April 3, 2018 [16 favorites]

> I used to have this opinion; that one should avoid the mark at all costs. Then I realized it help convey enthusiasm in email, and use it occasionally now.

This is where my standards vary. I usually don't like it when texting shortcuts start leaking into professional venues, even work emails and "nobody outside our team will ever see this" software documentation. At the other extreme it doesn't matter at all when texting. In most of the in-between cases, like office chat, web forums and non-business email my tolerance varies. The sociable chatter that represents the majority of online messages and posts usually operate by internal rules; grammar can be relaxed and in some cases acronyms, textspeech, emoticons, emojis and whatever else are acceptable, even appropriate. I might use a smiley in a work email to a colleague or manager, but probably only if I feel like I can have equally casual conversations face-to-face. And in online spaces tighter grammar and prose will always help when trying to explain a complex issue or write persuasively about something emotionally heated, if only because they imply that you have invested time and thought into getting your point across.

Grammar is socially and culturally contextual. An unspoken consensus usually forms to relax the rules and help expedite communication where shortcuts aren't going to cause ambiguity or where precision isn't relevant. Contexts are not consistent across online environments; what's acceptable in your workgroup's Slack channel isn't necessarily appropriate in the department Slack channel, standards vary in different subreddits (even among the non-shitty subreddits), what fits in Metafilter might not in Boing Boing. It's fun working in an office where workspace chat is being introduced to people for the first time, because the language evolves rapidly during the first few weeks while people figure out what to use it for and adjust to it.
posted by ardgedee at 2:52 AM on April 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Pride, prejudice and poor punctuation

In fact much of the credit for her elegant prose must go to publisher's reader and editor William Gifford, according to an academic who has compared the manuscripts and the published versions line by line.

Gifford, a much more obscure figure who was said to be shy and awkward, polished up Austen's manuscripts, smoothing out the style, regularising the punctuation, introducing the famous exquisitely placed semicolons and eliminating her blizzards of dashes.

and

"Her punctuation is much more sloppy, more like the kind of thing our students do and we tell them not to.["]

posted by pracowity at 3:39 AM on April 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

That is a great article pracowity – thanks for posting it!

I will note that it only mentions her use of dashes – if Gifford had added all 1000 exclamation marks to Emma during proofing then I expect that discrepancy would be mentioned in the article.

Here's an exclamation point in Jane Austen's own hand, from a chapter of Persuasion:
http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/manuscripts/blpers/1.html
posted by Cantdosleepy at 4:10 AM on April 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Those who claim to temper their enthusiasm like monks - I wanna subpoena your whatsapp messages. I bet you're abusing exclams just like the rest of us.
posted by tirutiru at 4:20 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

WRITE ALL BOOKS IN ALL CAPS
posted by kyrademon at 4:23 AM on April 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

A bit off topic but I really like the illustration in the first link.
posted by srboisvert at 4:33 AM on April 3, 2018

WRITE ALL BOOKS IN ALL CAPS

❓️ ❌️ emoji
posted by srboisvert at 4:34 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

I tend to (ab)use punctuation depending on the type of communication, and tend to play with punctuation in informal prose, where I want someone to imagine me speaking. Exclamation marks for excitement, *this* for finger-jabbing emphasis, the odd guillemet and... ellipses for a pause.

But for po-faced serious writing, not so much.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 4:52 AM on April 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Gifford, a much more obscure figure who was said to be shy and awkward, polished up Austen's manuscripts, smoothing out the style, regularising the punctuation, introducing the famous exquisitely placed semicolons and eliminating her blizzards of dashes.

Which was standard practice, incidentally, not something unique to Austen. It takes a few decades into the nineteenth century before the reader can or should assume that the punctuation necessarily originates with the author.

Anyway. I don't use a lot of exclamation points (although I was sad when an editor recently eliminated one of the sarcastic variety), but I do have a bad habit of sprinkling semi-colons everywhere and overdoing the parentheses (as in this very sentence).
posted by thomas j wise at 5:08 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

The head of my creative writing program called “!s” “bangers” and was pretty sure we had a limited number we could use per piece. He was also the kind of guy that would have told you most rules were made to be broken, so . . .
posted by thivaia at 5:16 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

In other news, you can avoid using semi-colons by rewording or just making a new sentence. Also, I don't like Qs, because they look like obese dogs with tails, can we ban them too?
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 5:18 AM on April 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

That does it - I’m going to write a strongly-worded, exclamation point-ridden letter decrying the pretentiousness and inanity of this mind bogglingly lackluster contribution to The Guardian!!!!!
posted by CottonCandyCapers at 5:32 AM on April 3, 2018

“She said ‘Hey, baby; Take a walk on the mild side.’”
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 5:37 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

There aren't many consolations of reaching 50, but no longer caring about dubious usage rules is one. In this, as in so many arguments about grammar and punctuation, I've occupied the full range of positions in response to whatever just-so story I last read, and as often as not have ended up back where I started: to boldly split or not to split; that/which; alright/all right; never exclaim/some are fine; avoid semicolons, unpaired em-dashes, ellipses... the list goes on—and on!

I did overuse exclamation marks at first, because I read so many comics as a kid, but avoiding them altogether is like avoiding the letter q: not uite as bad as avoiding e, but a bit uirky.

At least Ferrante acknowledges that her exclamation-free written universe is an artificial one.

[On preview: so much for my line about q.]
posted by rory at 5:41 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Can we all agree that if you have to add an exclamation mark to signal something is a joke that it has a zero chance of being funny?
posted by biffa at 6:01 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

¡It's just as well Ferrante's not Spanish!

As a thoroughly inconsistent punctuator who has never been subject to the constraints of proper publication, I like to keep my options open. While I'm more liable to abuse semicolons and indulge in an excess of ellipses—not to mention em-dashes—than to overuse exclamation marks, I reserve the right to deploy them liberally.

I vaguely recall reading a short story where every sentence was an exclamation, but I can't remember anything else about it!

What Overusing exclamation marks says about you: an article by Philip Cowell.
posted by misteraitch at 6:07 AM on April 3, 2018

I have to wonder: if Ferrante is opposed to the phallic nature of the exclamation point, how does she feel about her first-person pronouns being translated into capital 'I's?
posted by explosion at 6:23 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

I am exclamation-point averse, but I've found myself using them more recently especially when complimenting people's photos on Instagram. For some reason I feel like a jerk if I say "Wow, this is great." instead of "Wow, this is great!" It just seems to be the house style or something. Also I agree that exclamation-points-for-enthusiasm code as female, but then most of the hiker-photographers I follow are women, so I guess I'm just trying to fit in. Anyway, it's something I've noticed myself doing and I think about it probably more than is warranted.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:26 AM on April 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

I find it.... a thing..... that people automatically leap to assuming she's completely serious and can't possibly be using any of her turns of phrase for a bit of gentle humor.
posted by inconstant at 6:30 AM on April 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

“She said ‘Hey, baby; Take a walk on the mild side.’”
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 5:37 AM on April 3 [+] [!]

you're an evil, evil person
posted by alleycat01 at 6:36 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

In fact much of the credit for her elegant prose must go to publisher's reader and editor William Gifford, according to an academic who has compared the manuscripts and the published versions line by line.

Gifford, a much more obscure figure who was said to be shy and awkward, polished up Austen's manuscripts, smoothing out the style, regularising the punctuation, introducing the famous exquisitely placed semicolons and eliminating her blizzards of dashes.

Oh good I'm really glad we found a way to explain how one of the few women who's made it into the Western cannon, relatively speaking, really only got there because a man fixed her silly lady mistakes.

Yes, I read the article and I get that this isn't the point that Professor Sutherland is making and in fact she says "Does it make her less of a genius?...I don't think so...Indeed I think it makes her more interesting, and a much more modern and innovative writer than had been thought." which is neat! And yet the framing of the piece is "In fact much of the credit for her elegant prose must go to publisher's reader and editor William Gifford". Also this would be much less objectionable if there were a whole bunch of women in the western cannon but when there are arguably three major female author last names -- Austen, Brontë, and Shelley -- giving a man that much credit for the work of one of them rubs me the wrong way.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:52 AM on April 3, 2018 [10 favorites]

Written Italian generally uses an exclamation point at the end of an imperative, which can quickly add up. There's a lot more "Let's go!" than "Should we go now? or "I think we should go."
posted by camyram at 6:52 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Can we all agree that if you have to add an exclamation mark to signal something is a joke that it has a zero chance of being funny?

Something I've noticed about basically modern internet/texting style, at least the way I do it, is that it involves a lot of adding question marks to things that are not technically questions and very seldom punctuating questions at all
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:53 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Over the last few years I've consciously tried to cut down on my use of exclamation points in business emails and other written communication specifically because of the gendering issue. I realized I was often bookending emails with compliments or greetings or optimistic concluding sentences -- all of which was a way of "softening" work requests and making the email/my tone "nicer." I spent a lot of time making sure my word choices "sounded" nice rather than pushy or curt, that I wasn't coming across as too aggressive, etc.

Which, obviously, is a written version of what I as a woman have done my entire life in spoken communication. And also which: ugh.

Anyway, now when I write business emails I do a quick perusal for excess exclamations before hitting send, and usually find myself stripping out one or two. I find the overall tone is more authoritative and professional, but more than that, I don't want to self-perpetuate my anxiety about NEEDING to "come across" as "nice." My male colleagues aren't wasting their time worrying about that; why should I?

Also, is this going to lapse into a conversation about the proper use of hyphens, en-dashes, and em-dashes? Because I could be there for that.
posted by alleycat01 at 7:05 AM on April 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Do people really care this much? Because holy hell my work correspondence probably irritates the hell out of people. But I’m a Sr. Manager about to be Director so it’s not like my writing style is exactly hurting my career?
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:19 AM on April 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Something I've noticed about basically modern internet/texting style, at least the way I do it, is that it involves a lot of adding question marks to things that are not technically questions

For me, doing this is a way of adding a tone of slight hesitation or questioning. Sometimes because I'm actually not 100% in on what I'm saying (I mean, we could go to restaurant X, but also we could go elsewhere, I don't really care that much?), but also sometimes because I think it reads as being more relatable. This is clearly linked to my instinctive distrust of people who come across as SUPREMELY, UNREASONABLY confident of themselves in person. Self-deprecation is my jam!
posted by alleycat01 at 7:19 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

THE HOTDOG IS A SANDWICH AND I ENJOY PEAS IN MY GUACAMOLE!!!
posted by Fizz at 7:20 AM on April 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

My first thought when I got to the end and saw that: this wasn't even written in them language it's being read in! Hell, it might not even have been written about the language we're reading it in.

Yeah, go figure! it’s almost as if she was referring to the fact that Italians do tend to abuse the exclamation mark!!! both in private communications, chat, whatsapp, emails, etc. and online, on Twitter, on Facebook, blogs etc. Maybe not so much in the press, or in books, thankfully, but definitely anywhere else. Much more than what you see online in the English language.

I also suspect she’s being lighthearted about it, comparing the mark to "a commander’s staff, a pretentious obelisk, a phallic display", it sounds clearly over the top, tongue in cheek - and her wish for "polite enthusiasm" and "courteous complaints", among fellow Italians, hahaha, that’s just hilarious.

That said, does anyone else find her columns on the Guardian not particularly striking, to put it politely? It could be the translation, it could be the extreme brevity, but what I read so far sounds a bit flat and uninteresting rather than simply "detached".
posted by bitteschoen at 7:34 AM on April 3, 2018

Hooray! I'm for the other team!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:46 AM on April 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

the mismatch of single-quote and double-quote in the post title is making me itchy all over my whole body

And I wish I could say I had done it deliberately!!!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:06 AM on April 3, 2018

Yeah, go figure! it’s almost as if she was referring to the fact that Italians do tend to abuse the exclamation mark!!! both in private communications, chat, whatsapp, emails, etc. and online, on Twitter, on Facebook, blogs etc.

Which is a weird thing for a British newspaper to publish, particularly without any context other than a quick note that the piece was translated. It really wasn't written for the Guardian's audience, and there's little to no explanation or exploration of that.
posted by Dysk at 8:08 AM on April 3, 2018

THE HOTDOG IS A SANDWICH AND I ENJOY PEAS IN MY GUACAMOLE!!!

Stay in Canada then?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:23 AM on April 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

I'm really glad we found a way to explain how one of the few women who's made it into the Western cannon

I hope All Quiet on the Western Front is still in there.
posted by pracowity at 8:42 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

But how does she feel about the interrobang‽
posted by Flannery Culp at 8:58 AM on April 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

The author should also give up on question marks. Actually, ditch periods too. Your writing and tone can convey the end of a sentence or a query on it's own.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:15 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

I realized I was often bookending emails with compliments or greetings or optimistic concluding sentences -- all of which was a way of "softening" work requests and making the email/my tone "nicer." I spent a lot of time making sure my word choices "sounded" nice rather than pushy or curt, that I wasn't coming across as too aggressive, etc.

I've been specifically asked to do this, by at least two managers in different companies, for the expressed purpose of sounding more nice. It was included in performance evaluations. And now that airhead email voice is fully ingrained in my fingers and I can never stop.

Is it internalized sexist bullshit? YES! But if adding phony "Hi all!" and "Cheers!" to emails is all it takes not to have that rage-inducing conversation again, fine!
posted by Freyja at 9:38 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I find the exclamation point absolutely necessary for the phoney and useless interactions I have over email! Hey! Got your message! Those TPS reports are on their way! Don't want to sound rude! So I'll sound EXCITED!

It's garbage and and I hate it. Also Ferrante is an astounding novelist, and her avoidance of exclamation is, in hindsight, important to the mood of her books (which are BIG MOOD books)
posted by dis_integration at 9:40 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Which is a weird thing for a British newspaper to publish, particularly without any context other than a quick note that the piece was translated. It really wasn't written for the Guardian's audience, and there's little to no explanation or exploration of that.

I agree! But then when I googled "abuso del punto esclamativo" the results (as well as confirming the above-said abuse) included articles in Italian media referring to a British government directive "banning" the use of exclamation marks in school, which provoked mixed reactions. So maybe it is a trans-linguistic issue?
posted by bitteschoen at 9:41 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Am I alone in being underwhelmed at Ferrante’s Guardian column, so far?
posted by progosk at 10:02 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

why would you do this

It just seems right?
posted by clavicle at 10:16 AM on April 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Ferrante is a skillful writer who can convey all kinds of emotional excess without exclamation marks, but I am not so good and I need to throw in multiple exclamation marks until my texts resemble the title of an ice skating anime.

I get extremely excited and passionate and in general really enthusiastic about things, and though there's lots of horrible things/people out there, in general I feel the world is amazing and awesome and full of bounty and people are great and amazing and full of bounty as well - even now in these quite depressing days. (Really, I've got 4 modes: enthusiastically upset, enthusiastic, super enthusiastic, and hangry.) And sometimes I may be capable of expressing all of that without punctuation overuse for someone/something awesome if I wrestle with the right words for 20 minutes. . . . ooooooor I could just use an exclamation mark and then use that time to go tell my husband thank-you for a small thing and go outside to gape - again - at how amazingly beautiful my neighbor's tulips are. The exclamation mark is going to win every time, and it is how I feel, so why not use it?

I admire people who work so well with words they can convey all kinds of sentiments without exclamation marks, dog emojiis, and without too many other punctuation marks. I appreciate, very much, that kind of precision. I appreciate how important it is to some people to think about those things - that's just fantastic. They're very admirable. And I used to want to be like that, and it drove me bonkers I wasn't. I have enormous respect for the power of words, and to not use them correctly seemed not only disrespectful but almost dishonorable - if that makes sense. Like a betrayal. (Which is why my own typos/misspellings bug the hell out of me and always will.) So there was a time when I would agonize over a single punctuation mark. (And yeah, part of that was the worrying about being coded as female.)

But I gradually realized part of the agony was fighting myself. I didn't want to look over my words again for the 10th time. I wanted to look over tulips! Gradually I began to relax and just embrace it. Sometimes the priority is to struggle with the right wording and punctuation. And sometimes, beautiful red tulips popping out of the snow are more important to me, so I cut to the chase and use an exclamation mark. Low tones and polite enthusiasm are great if that works for you - you do you. I'm with Ferrante that exclamation marks are not for pain and hate and try, if sometimes unsuccessfully, to limit them in that context. But when it comes to enthusiastic excitement, I let go of the punctuation thing in casual situations and casual matters; I have to say it's made me a lot happier just to be own enthusiastic self.

However, I really loved this essay because as ardgegee said:

And in online spaces tighter grammar and prose will always help when trying to explain a complex issue or write persuasively about something emotionally heated, if only because they imply that you have invested time and thought into getting your point across.

Context matters. I still might be passionate but as something grows in importance and priority I will want to convey how seriously I take it by using my words and punctuation more carefully. It's a sign of respect for both the power of language and the subject matter. I get excited and exclamation mark-y about tulips. I do not get that way about children dying or ICE raids. Thus I also agree with Ferrante's ending point: when the leader of a nation uses exclamation marks for everything from congratulating first responders to self-aggrandizement to war, it conveys a complete lack of thought or any other kind of investment in what he's saying. I read into it an utter lack of respect for both subject and language - even though he uses words as a tool all the time. It's alarming because if he can be so cavalier and disrespectful about language, how cavalier is he going to be about the other tools he has at his disposal regarding subjects in which he's demonstrating so little respect and investment? (Well, we're certainly and depressingly seeing that play out live, aren't we.) So I absolutely loved how Ferrante demonstrates her own skills by first making a subtle dig at motivation with calling an exclamation mark "a pretentious obelisk, a phallic display" at the beginning and then following through to answer that question through the comparison of an exclamation mark to a nuclear warhead.
posted by barchan at 10:21 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Writers are lavish with exclamation marks. In text messages, in WhatsApp chats, in emails, I’ve counted up to five in a row.

I initially assumed she was talking about those as write books and such. Different kettle of fish. Electronic screens, like sports cars, seem to bring out an excitable sort of beast within whoever is at the controls.

For less ephemeral prose, in English at any rate, the EP can carry a weight less burdensome than her commanders' rod. Even among, or especially among, the low toned, a judiciously placed EP can signal no more than a relatively mild despair, or genuine pleasure, lightly emphatic, but not bombastic. Context, and paper and ink, is everything.

(Speaking of context - I have a small green granite obelisk I quite treasure. It is not pretentious. Those of Egypt - well, everything from Egypt is out-sized, yet somehow their obelisks only seem pretentious when put in other cultures' settings. Sort of like pyramids. Giza's is grandiose, Cestius's and Pei's are a tad absurd. Like the sand dance, which was way different in ancient Egypt.

But I digress)
posted by BWA at 10:52 AM on April 3, 2018

"Can we all agree that if you have to add an exclamation mark to signal something is a joke that it has a zero chance of being funny?"

Only if we can agree never to use 'lol' again. Ever.
posted by el io at 11:39 AM on April 3, 2018

as if. lol.
posted by ardgedee at 11:44 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Lol!

Or maybe lol?
posted by chavenet at 11:49 AM on April 3, 2018

Can we all agree that if you have to add an exclamation mark to signal something is a joke that it has a zero chance of being funny?

Yes but then it also has zero chance of being recognized as a joke by 95% of the population. See also: smiley face. I have had an otherwise intelligent, well-educated person email me to clarify that my exceedingly obvious joke was a joke because I “didn’t include a smiley face.”

Exclamation point inflation is definitely a thing. When everyone commenting on a FB post is using them in multiples, you do look like a dour old stick-in-the-mud if you play it straight. We exclamation point ascetics find ourselves in a dilemma. I’ve just totally abandoned my priniciples for the sake of being understood.
posted by HotToddy at 1:20 PM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

outta hand with these wacky milennials
Rubbish. When it's not Australian it's pure Bristolian. The written question mark conveys regional speech tones elegantly.
posted by glasseyes at 6:56 AM on April 4, 2018

the use of exclamation marks in mathematical writing is very interesting. it's not exactly supposed to convey emotion, more like "pay attention, you should find this counterintuitive or surprising", although that's not exactly right either.

there's a lot of weird things like that in mathematical texts. for example, you'll very often see authors say "clearly", "obviously", "it is clear that". at first, this seems like it could be condescension or gatekeeping, but it's actually a really useful signpost telling you that you need to understand why something is true, but that it won't take any great mental acrobatics to do so.

contrast this to "it can be shown that" (which means you need to understand what something says but not why it's true) or "by a very deep result of X" (which means you need to understand what something says, and don't even try to understand why it's true).

i've never heard of anyone teaching how to interpret things like this. it's not "mathematical maturity", it's way less nebulous than that. searches for "mathematical rhetoric" don't seem to turn up anything useful.

i think some of the face emojis have started to catch on as generic intensifiers in lieu of exclamation marks 😩😩😭. maybe this will spread to mathematical writing soon.
posted by vogon_poet at 10:50 AM on April 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

I tried to make a joke on Instagram yesterday. The person didn't get it, and when I explained that I was joking they said that they didn't know because I hadn't used a smiley. God help us.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:05 AM on April 5, 2018

I tried to make a joke on Instagram yesterday. The person didn't get it, and when I explained that I was joking they said that they didn't know because I hadn't used a smiley.

That's been the function of smileys for nearly 25 years now. I did my senior project on them back in 95. Written comments on the internet lack contextual clues, especially when people can say outrageous things completely seriously. This isn't a new situation.

In short, you weren't clear.
posted by happyroach at 6:40 AM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Hm. People have been communicating in writing, without contextual clues, for millennia, and making humorous remarks without smileys for all but the last 25 years. I don't think the average writer is any less clear than they used to be. I think the difference is that people used to be alive to the possibility of humor--even dry humor!--when reading, but now have become conditioned to think that all humor will be accompanied by a drawing of the emotion they're meant to feel. It's depressing.:(
posted by HotToddy at 12:03 PM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

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