On Exclamation Points
Why do I love them SO much?!?!
Happy Friday! This week’s newsletter is a little bit of a silly one. Levity feels like something we (or I) could use right now. :)
Sitting at my work computer about to wrap up for the day, I read through the email one more time. I had been carefully crafting it for the past ten minutes or so. It was to an important potential client and I didn’t want to mess it up. I left our last meeting genuinely excited about how we could partner and I wanted to authentically convey that in my follow up. It was a doozy of an email with links to examples of our work, references to moments from the meeting, requested data, and suggested times for our next conversation. Something else the email was filled with? Exclamation points!!!
So! Many! Exclamation! Points!
This was not an uncommon occurrence for me; I knew what I had to do.
I went over the email again, taking out at least half of the exclamation points with each pass through. It took at least 2-3 passes before I got to what I considered to be an acceptable amount for the length and type of email. I figured I had space for two, three tops.
And yes, I had THAT many exclamation points to begin with!
Why do I love exclamation points so much?
Great question.
One reason is that I want to make sure people realize that I am truly excited/inspired/thrilled about whatever I am emailing them about. I don’t overuse exclamation points in other forms of writing--it is a short form communication (i.e. email and texting) problem.
[And yes, I punctuate my text messages. I’m not young.]
I find that with less words it is harder to show the tone I want to convey. So I get a little lazy and use an exclamation point to show my excitement. I don’t want anyone to think that I am being rude or bored or not genuinely happy to be communicating with them.
Another underlying reason is definitely my people-pleasing tendencies. For me, the exclamation point becomes the written form of smiling to put people at ease.
And I smile quite a bit.
In teaching, there is an old saying that you shouldn’t smile until Thanksgiving, to ensure a strong classroom management and establish your authority, or something like that. When I was a teacher, my first teaching coach lovingly told me that there was no way I would make it past the first day without smiling, and I shouldn’t try. I should be who I am, which is a person who smiles a lot. I appreciated their acknowledgement of my humanity and not forcing me into some made up, silly box. And I absolutely smiled that first day, and every day following.
The fact is that I genuinely enjoy smiling and am a very nurturing person at heart. Kids have always been drawn to me and people, sometimes strangers, feel compelled to share their life stories within minutes of meeting me. I have that effect on people.
Yet, I recognize that there is also some gender stuff going on here since women and girls are taught to be “nice” and cater to others far too much. Exclamation points are one manifestation of this. I can pretty much guarantee that my partner doesn’t have to re-read his emails to ensure that he hasn’t used too many exclamation points.
So, to end my ramble, I will not NOT use exclamation points, but I do realize that my overuse of them makes their effect useless, so I filter them out to an amount that is a slight overuse but still acceptable in the workplace.
In personal emails and texts, though, watch out.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! may be coming your way!