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How many exclamation points do you need to seem genuinely enthusiastic?
By Julie Beck / The Atlantic
June 27, 2018
How many exclamation points does it take to exclaim something? 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 anymore. 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.
I noticed this in my own social circles recently. Multiple exclamation points were 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.
“All of these quirks of social media—that would include exclamation points, and all caps, and repetition of letters, those are the three main ones that show enthusiasm—people use more of them,†says Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University.
This sort of inflation is a natural linguistic phenomenon that regularly happens to words, like how awesome was once reserved for that which truly struck awe into a quavering heart and is now scarcely more than a verbal thumbs up. But this time it’s happening to punctuation.
More at:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/06/exclamation-point-inflation/563774/
