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This article was posted to Jayber on 24 July 2006 by to the following categories: Feature, Stories.

An audio version of this article is also available.

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Lori (Benson) Linder

Hey,
I’ve missed reading your writing… (sorry, couldn’t help myself)

Amen brother (son). I shudder to imagine what the formula would do if the sentence has all caps and has an exclamation point or two?

Bang !

Shelly Hughes

You are so funny. I am guilty of the unrequired overuse of such exclamation marks. The first step IS admitting you have a problem.

Well, the general rule is this: the more exclamation points there are, the more delusional the author. I’ve kept this in mind when reading all e-mails, chain-letters, essays, and political screeds, and I’ve found it to be a quite reliable axiom.

This is a clear, easy-to-use system which can certainly help us to identify and help/correct/suppress errant authors.

However, there is one strange exception that hasn’t yet been considered. My preferred signature online and offline contains a bang! You can see it even here. And I’m not the only person afflicted by this issue. Consider the actor “N!xau” from The Gods Must Be Crazy.

What can be done for me and for N!xau?

Well, the use of the bang in personal or corporate (i.e. Yahoo!) branding probably doesn’t count as grotesque.

The Exclamation Ratio really exists solely to identify overuse of this particular type of punctuation.

Running JL! through the filter produces an undefined result:

r = 1 / ( 1 - 1 ) = undefined

So, to answer your question, you’re “safe” (for the time being) from the grammar mafia. Just be thankful that you didn’t choose JL!! for your moniker, or we’d be having an entirely different kind of “conversation”.

Flagrant notational violence of the exclamatory--dare I say inflammatory--variety is rampant and must be extinguished before it does further harm. Ladies and gentlemen, grammarians and countrymen, it's time to raise public awareness of the overuse of exclamation marks. Allow me to introduce a new tool: the Exclamation Ratio (r).

Definition

The Exclamation Ratio (r) of a group of sentences is the ratio of sentences ending in exclamation marks to sentences not ending in exclamation marks and is formally defined as follows:

r = s / ( t - s )

Where:
t = Total number of sentences. 1
s = Number of sentences ending in exclamation marks. 2

Interpretation

After calculating the Exclamation Ratio (r) for a given set of sentences, the results may be interpreted in the following way:

  • 0.00 - 0.10: This is normal; no reason to be alarmed.
  • 0.10 - 0.25: The author is playing with fire and must be monitored.
  • 0.25 - 0.75: This is getting serious; seek professional help.
  • 0.75 - 1.00: Proceed with smack-down.
  • 1.00 - ∞: Repeatedly beat head against nearby wall.

Summary

I consistently receive emails that have a multitude of exclamation marks in near as many sentences. This has grown to be more than a minor annoyance and until now it's been unclear to me how to deal with this epidemic which is spreading faster than anyone had previously imagined. Some of the emails I've received recently have had Exclamation Ratios (r) of 5.00 or higher--off the charts!

The new breed of email demands a verdict. What say you? It's time for the typographic unification of our punctual selves. Who's with me? Do you not remember when these egregious vulgarities were once thought to be merely fictional impossibilities? Regrettably, Truman, they are no longer; welcome to this cruel place we call life where glaring crimes are being garishly committed not only without repercussions, but without remorse.

Hear me please. Is anyone listening?

  1. Sentences not terminated properly with a full stop, ellipsis, exclamation mark or question mark are not counted. This is not English and should not be treated as such.
  2. If a given sentence has two or more exclamation marks, automatically increase the Exclamation Ratio (r) by one (1) for each extra exclamation mark to aptly reflect the gross inappropriateness of this very special violation.
≡ 24 Jul 2006
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