question marks and exclamation points Ask more questions; avoid exclamations

The ques­tion mark is un­der­used. Many times, you can make a topic sen­tence sim­pler and pithier by pre­sent­ing it in the form of a ques­tion. It’s easy surgery:

We now turn our attention to the issue

of whether Munchausen syndrome was

diagnosed before the 1960s. before Was Munchausen syndrome diagnosed

before the 1960s? after

The ex­cla­ma­tion point is overused. Give your­self a bud­get of one ex­cla­ma­tion point for any doc­u­ment longer than three pages. If you must use it, use it wisely.