Exclamation points: Don’t get carried away!

Back in my advertising days, I had a creative director who used to say (with a self-satisfied chuckle), “Using an exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” Like much of his work, this statement was unoriginal; numerous sources attribute it to F. Scott Fitzgerald. But it’s true that there’s something self-serving about what copy editors call the bang character.

Derived from the Latin (“note of admiration”), exclamation points were originally used to express joy or wonderment. From here it was a quick leap to astonishment in the negative sense—”That’s the biggest wart I’ve ever seen!”—as well as to sarcasm and warnings.

The recent trend toward overuse might have started with Tom Wolfe, who (if Trivial Pursuit is to be believed) employed 2,343 of them in his blockbuster “Bonfire of the Vanities.” It’s gotten a huge boost from email and text messaging, where multiple bangs are routinely used to turn up the volume.