Great Exclamations

I would like to keep this blog as a space for words and thoughts and wonderings. I would like to keep away from using this space as a speaker box for ranting. You don’t come here to read tirades and outbursts. (Hopefully) You come here to read words. Words that may at times provoke thought; words that may provoke a smile; words that may even provoke a wry snort. But you do not come here to read words that have flung forth from the fiery depths of my mind, saturated in venom and bile.

Ok, well maybe I went a bit over-board there, but you get my drift.

It is for the reasons above that I am going to try very hard not to rant. But I think it might actually turn out to be, in technical terms, a rant.

Forgive me, for I am about to sin.

Exclamation marks. A punctuation mark much beloved amongst marketing and advertising companies. “CRAZY REDUCTIONS!”. “HAPPY HOUR!”. “BUY SEVEN, GET THE EIGHTH FREE!!”. It is there to express, yes, you guessed it, exclamatory comments. Comments that require the reader’s attention, and denote that there is something of interest in that phrase.

“I’m wearing an orange jumper today.”

A fairly innocuous statement. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing really to pay attention to. It is clear what the phrase means. You can ingest and move on fairly quickly.

“I’m wearing an orange jumper today!!”

Now we’re talking – those two leggy loons of linguistic regulation automatically make you think “Ooooh. Orange??? How very risqué.”, or perhaps, “A jumper? Ugh. You’re mad. Don’t you know it is all about the cardigan this week.”

And there you have it. By the simple addition of our stately syntactical friends, we have elevated the statement to one denoting surprise, shock and interest.

Red.

What connotations does that bring to your mind?

Roses?

Hearts?

Lips?

Sexuality?

Post-boxes?

Telephone boxes?

Royal Mail?

Warmth?

Heat?

Fire?

Danger?

Depending on how your mind works, whether it ponders on the expedition of communications, or your partner’s corporal qualities, red can mean a variety of things to each person. I think what is quite universal, however, is red being used as a cautionary signal. The hazard light button in cars is red. Fire or smoke alarms often are red. Low batteries on electronic devices are, by and large, red.

Now combine the two. Red + exclamation mark.

The Holy Grail of Exclaiming.

That packs a punch doesn’t it? A double whammy of “LOOK AT ME GODDAMIT”. You see a red exclamation mark and, even if only subconsciously, you know you are going to have a closer look or be aware.

If you take this tour-de-force of alarm and warning, and confine it to that oh-so-perilous sphere of work emails, you have yourself a sure-fire way to p**s me off.

For those of you fortunate enough to not work in an office environment or in a job that centres on emails, that ‘!’ is an optional extra one can add to an email of “high importance”.

If I was that ‘!’, frankly I would feel used and abused by today’s office dwellers. I have counted today, and from the same person I have received nineteen emails marked with ‘!’. Actually, every email this person has sent me has had the ‘!’.

I very readily give people benefit of the doubt, but, on this occasion, I seriously doubt that every word that has seemingly flowed so effortlessly from their fingers is of such great importance.

Have they not heard of the boy who howled wolf?

Just like there is an ‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day’, I would heartily support an ‘International Exclamation Mark Amnesty’ day. A day in which people, if their message is so very important, used other means to convey said importance – by calling, for example, or, more revolutionary and new-age still, doing the task themselves instead of creating a huge chain of responsibility by passing the job or follow-up on to their colleagues.

Ground-breaking ideas, I know. That one might be better placed taking responsibility for one’s own needs and tasks…

And then as soon as that colour and irritated vigour rises up in me, so it ebbs away in the face of the Corporate Machine and status quo.

Pfft.

For my part, just like I turn off lights and radios and TVs when not in the room, and how I don’t stand under the shower for 27 minutes in the morning, and how I do my grocery shopping on foot and not in the car, I don’t use the ‘!’ until absolutely vital (and I can’t quite remember what about work is truly ‘vital’, but then that’s a whole other post right there). Like all of the other examples, I don’t expect my actions to dramatically alter the global situation, but, it’s me doing my bit. Because your life is only that – your bit to look after. Yes we impact other people, but then you should be looking after that bit, the impacting bit, anyway.

It would be nice to think that 19-exclamation-marker would see how I never use the ‘!’, and be prompted to think about their usage of it, and realise how much they’d been exploiting it, and resolutely promise to never over-use it ever again…

But then it would also be nice to think about pretty much anything else other than work emails and ‘!’s.