Writing Tools

The first research I remember on the effects of word processing was produced by a New Jersey professor who contrasted the work of students using Apples vs. those using IBM personal computers. He concluded that while the Apple kids wrote cleaner looking stories, the PC kids produced the better writing.

More than a quarter century later, anyone who sits at a computer can control how the text will look on the page. On a typewriter, my choices were limited to margins and line spacing, upper and lower cases, and, perhaps, a ribbon that could produce type in red or black. Now your humble servant can control typeface, type size, italics, boldface, underline, color, bullet styles for lists and much more.

I suspect that the liberty to influence how the page looks has altered writing in our time. I've run into contemporary books in which the author has added design elements -- some of them dramatic -- upon what would otherwise be considered inviolable textual integrity. Such experimentation can be traced back at least to 18th century novels such as "Tristram Shandy," in which the author interrupts the text with plot diagrams and one dramatic page printed in black.

More than two centuries later, "The Emigrants," a novel by German author W.G. Sebald, includes everything from dozens of family photographs to copies of handwritten messages. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time," a novel by Mark Haddon written in the voice of an autistic boy, contains dozens of flow-charts, maps, mathematical formulas, signage, schedules -- all rendered in a variety of type faces. One of the odd pleasures in reading the work of David Foster Wallace is the opportunity to escape from the main text to explore epic footnotes, always rendered at the bottom of pages in thickets of tiny type.

In such an environment, even the exclamation point is making a comeback.

After a brief revival during the New Journalism of the 1960s -- during which punctuation often looked like an LSD hallucination -- the exclamation point went into hiding from serious writers. That little phallic bat and ball exposed itself mostly in children's literature and romance novels.

Novelist Elmore Leonard assumed the usual position with this advice to writers: "Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have a knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful." The secret message broadcast by the likes of Leonard was that the exclamation point revealed a flighty or playful personality.

To suggest how times have changed, I recently received an e-mail message that contained a six-word sentence followed by eleven (11!) exclamation points. The message, written by a man, challenges the way in which gender distinctions influence the use of punctuation. Originally aired on Oct. 7, 1993, an episode of Seinfeld included this exchange between Elaine Benes and her boyfriend Jake about his failure to demonstrate appropriate enthusiasm in a handwritten message:

Elaine: Well, I was just curious why you didn't use an exclamation point?
Jake: What are you talking about?
Elaine: See, right here you wrote "Myra had the baby," but you didn't use an exclamation point. ... I mean if one of your close friends had a baby and I left you a message about it, I would use an exclamation point.
Jake: Well, maybe I don't use my exclamation points as haphazardly as you do. ...
Elaine: I just thought you would be a little more excited about a friend of mine having a baby.
Jake: Ok, I'm excited. I just don't happen to like exclamation points.
Elaine: Well, you know Jake, you should learn to use them. Like the way I'm talking right now, I would put an exclamation point at the end of all these sentences! On this one! And on that one!
Jake: Well, you can put one on this one: I'm leaving!

Later in the episode, Elaine's boss at Pendant Publishing notices that her final edit of a manuscript contains an inordinate number of ... you guessed it!

Elaine: Well, I felt that the writing lacked a certain emotion and intensity.
Lippman: Oh, "It was a damp and chilly afternoon, so I decided to put on my sweatshirt!" ... You put an exclamation point after sweatshirt?

Which brings us to the emoticon. That new word was created from a blend of emotion + icon. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as a series of keyed characters used especially in e-mail to indicate an emotion, such as pleasure [:-)] or sadness [:-(]" Something weird just happened on my computer screen when I typed those two emoticons. Like a scene out of "2001 Space Odyssey," my computer attempted to replace my typed images with smiley and sad faces:


I don't hate exclamation points, but I hate smiley and frowny faces, so rest assured that you will never see them again in this column or any other column or book I write. Which leads me to the suspicion that some virus has filled my word processor with a Petri dish full of emoticons. Just as the Rosetta Stone helped us translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, a simple Internet search will lead you to dozens of emoticons to signify everything from humor, to lust, to mischief ;-).

In the land of the emoticon, the exclamation point seems downright weighty, which leads me to this advice:

1. If you want to be considered a serious writer, never, ever use emoticons in e-mail messages. The occasional exclamation point is fine.

2. If you are tempted to use an exclamation point, read the passage aloud. If the content contains excitement or emotional intensity, perhaps you don't need the exclaimer.

3. The more serious the story, the fewer exclamation marks will be appropriate.

4. The less serious the story, the more liberty you can take with !!!!!!!!

5. The most practical use of exclaimers is after a quotation or bit of dialogue that expresses excitement or intense emotion: "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!"

6. In a story, a single exclamation mark can go a long way.

Workshop:

a. As you bump into exclamation points in your reading, stop to consider whether the content requires them.

b. When you find one in your own work, identify the emotion you are trying to convey: Laughter? Fear? Amazement? Look for opportunities to illustrate such emotion so that the mark may not be necessary.

c. Before you use an exclamation point to add intensity to a quotation or dialogue, read the passage aloud to hear the level of intensity. Who knows, perhaps you will need more than one exclaimer.

d. In your reading, begin to notice the ways in which writers experiment with the appearance of the page, including design elements beyond punctuation.