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Old May 01, 2013, 03:05 PM
stopdog stopdog is offline
underdog is here
 
Member Since: Sep 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by My kids are cool View Post
soooooo, stopdog, are ALL punctuation marks oppressive? What about my emphatic all caps thing I do sometimes when I think I am making a point? Or when I am just randomly weird? What if a person were talking to you in real life and you could just hear the exclamation point in their voice? Is that still bad?
I am going to be weird and answer this for real (and this is in terms of real life - not here on the forums where I was just playing):
I would not call it bad - just over the top. Like using a samurai sword to stab a cocktail wienie.
I think most exclamation marks are mis-used when used for minor, non emphatic reasons which I think defeats the purpose of having such punctuation to mark something significant - over use of the punctuation mark devalues it.
I find some people overly exclamation - mark like in tone of voice too. Again - is it really the same level of excitement for everything? How does one distinguish between - "I had a twinkie for lunch" and "The river is flooded and washed away the elementary school." If both get the same exclamation mark (assuming there is not more behind the twinkie thing).
But I am an unemotional vulcan robot, and I only consider emotion proper in small contained amounts. Most things do not evoke an exclamation mark's worth of emotion in me and when I see them I think something must be super important to warrant such response. I also think they are hard to read (like emoticons - they break up a paragraph too much and make them harder to read). So it is probably just me.

Here is one rationale for the other side:
Several studies have shown that women use exclamation marks more than men do, and one study suggests that, in addition to other usage, exclamation points may also function as markers of friendly interaction, for example, by making "Hi!" or "Good luck!" seem friendlier than simply "Hi." or "Good luck."
I seem to be in the minority in not finding exclamation points friendlier. I think they are often a club (see earlier reference to me being a vulcan zombie).

Last edited by stopdog; May 01, 2013 at 03:22 PM.
Thanks for this!
murray