There. I said it. There’s no going back on a statement like that. Around various corners of my glamorous writing life, I’ve been hearing tales of the resurgence of the exclamation point!

I wonder, is it all the social networking?! Is it the desperate desire for attention our society craves?! They didn’t even appear on typewriters until the 1970’s, and yet, exclamations are an omnipresent crutch – giving more bang to prose!

I learned to almost never use one. I learned to allow the words to realize the exclamation.

“Cut out all these exclamation points,” F Scott Fitzgerald urged. “An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”

Well, I may have to argue with the gifted one, sometimes my jokes are pretty funny! Perhaps my blog is more exciting when I do this: !!!

I used to reprimand my friends for using more than one, arguing, “Can I be more excited with more exclamation points?!!” It’s like, “Coach, how can I give 110% when I only have 100 to give?!!”

Now I am exposed to excitement 24/7 with sensational stories like Fantasia and the Pomeranian~! And with news outlets like FOX and CNN, Twitter and Reddit hammering out fervor and chaos over the most mundane things, I cannot imagine how to possibly compete without lots of these: !!!

Now that I have written this blog, I think I have bangorrhea too!

What are your thoughts on this? !!!