Monday, May 11, 2009

E-mail, Emotion, and the Exclamation Mark

As electronic communication becomes more and more central to our work (and personal) lives, some have noticed a beginning revival of an ending....a sentence's ending.

The Guardian recently featured a story on The Joy of Exclamation Marks. In the article, Stuart Jeffries comments on how the exclamation point's use has changed in the electronic era. Once seen as shouting, "laughing at your own jokes," or even a "sign of a diseased mind," the punctuation is making a comeback as our communication by written message has exponentially increased.

But the exclamation point may not just be making a comeback--it might even be staging a hostile take over. The article reports that current business etiquette and dynamics may make the exclamation point required.

Because it is harder to convey emotions in an email, the exclamation point allows more emotion to show. Most of us probably agree: "I'm looking forward to your speech!" shows much more enthusiasm than "I'm looking forward to your speech."

Most interestingly, one of the theories behind increased usage is attributed to women's style of communication. Jeffries examines Carol Waseleski's paper, Gender and the Use of Exclamation Points in Computer-Mediated Communication, which found that women used more exclamation marks than men.

Jeffries posits on a couple of theories from Waseleski's paper: women might use exclamation points to convey the strength of their convictions, or perhaps to make up for a lack of stature and insecurity about expressing one's thoughts.

Or maybe exclamation marks are just a sign of friendliness, and "women use them more than men because they [are], as a gender, less likely to be socially inept, funless egotists." His words, not mine.

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