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I'm so excited!!! And I just can't hide it??
Okay, today I’m monumentally swamped so I don’t have time to do the lengthy discourse on dangling modifiers I was going to, and I’m not sure these haven’t just grown tedious anyways, so I’m going with something mondo simple today!
That little exclamation point is your clue — today’s mythunderstandings is about exclamation and question marks. Which, on the surface, seem kind a simple, no? The problem comes when people try to extrapolate from casual communication, where exclamation points (also called bangs in the biz, and frankly, that’s way easier to write, so I might just do that) are used with abandon, into formal writing; question marks seem to cause problems particularly when they’re used in dialog or with other punctuation. (If you want to know about using these inside quotation marks, go here for my piece about those. But you would never want to use a comma or period with either of these marks, even in dialog.)
Exclamation points are used after any emphatic interjection, or similar type of expression, to indicate strong emotions, a style of speaking, or surprise, disbelief, etc. It’s really pretty simple, but the problem for a lot of writers who aren’t really skilled at conveying these things is that they want to go overboard. It could be that writers who misuse or overuse them aren’t sure they can convey the dialog they hear in their head, but bangs are kinda like chocolate, sex, good Scotch, or pretty much anything else — too much of a good thing can end up making you lose appreciation for it. If you’re using a bang at the end of almost every line of dialog because, for instance, you know Willow speaks very excitedly and brightly, then you’re going to lose the emphasis a well-placed bang will give to her dialog (plus, it just gets sort of tough to read). If you think a piece of dialog like this is good, then, well, we should chat:
In something like that, I’d probably save that exclamation point in the middle sentence, to convey the feeling of Willow being excited, in that sentence most of all. A good writer will describe the character well enough so that you know their speech patterns, and you can kind of infer the sense of excitement from that, or through adjectives and adverbs: “I know — I thought that spell was pretty cool, too! And watching her head explode was really kind of an unexpected bonus,” Willow said brightly.
You do want to use bangs to emphasize words spoken with real power — Spike would shout, “Bugger!” or Jayne would bellow “Gorramit, Mal!” and so on (notice the bang on that second one comes after Mal, not after gorramit). And they’re a convenient shorthand for communicating the intensity that dialog often has in real life. In informal conversation, such as e-mail or LJ or something, we often use a number of exclamation points to really get across a sense of excitement and fun — but that’s something we don’t really want to do in formal writing. So while I’ll throw in multiple bangs when I’m saying to a friend, “Oh my God!!! I can’t believe I ran into James Marsters on Rodeo Drive!!!!” I don’t necessarily want to do that in formal writing, especially because I should be writing more carefully to convey my enthusiasm — so that one would be enough on either of those exclamations I made. Overuse of bangs is the hallmark of the teenage girl writer, and even if you are a teenage girl? Don’t write like one, especially not if you’re writing male slash, because guys just aren’t gonna be talking that way. I guarantee it.
Question marks seem to cause similar goofiness in people. Like, my god, if I’m really confused, I must need about four question marks to convey that! Which, again, fine in informal communication (“I can’t believe what Xander did to Anya last night — WTF???”), not so fine in a piece of fanfic. If you’re tempted, resist; trust me, your readers will thank you for it, besides assuming that you’re an adult and not a 13-year-old.
Question marks are actually pretty simple — use them after a direct question, but not an indirect one. Don’t freak, that’s not as grammary as it sounds. A direct question is, well, direct:
An indirect question is, well, indirect — you’re not asking anyone point blank, rather, you’re repeating or paraphrasing another question:
Sometimes you’ll run into a situation where your sentence seems like neither of the above, and it’s really easy, if you haven’t got the detail skills down yet, to get twisted around on those. But if your regular, non-questiony sentence contains a direct question inside it, you’ll probably want to put your question mark as close as possible to your questiony sentence. For instance, even though this first one is relating a question by someone else, since it’s in quotes, you’ll want to stick that mark in there, because it’s ending an actual direct question. And the second one has a kind of interpolated question in between the other sentences, so it would help your reader if you used the mark.
The most important thing I can say about both of these, and the thing I run up against nearly every day in my job, is that there’s a real difference between casual use of both these marks and formal use such as fanfic or technical documentation, or anything written for more than just simple conversation. Make it easy on your reader, and don’t try to overuse or overemphasize these marks — when we read, we use punctuation mentally to tell us how things are being said, so if you go overboard on them or use them constantly when a simple period will do, you’re making your reader pause, think for a sec, and then move on. Their mind is having to work harder than they may want, and they could just hit delete and move on. The work should all be on your end — if you spend enough time crafting how something is said, and communicating it through sound characterization and description, then you won’t have to sprinkle bangs and question marks in as if they were chocolate chips.
That little exclamation point is your clue — today’s mythunderstandings is about exclamation and question marks. Which, on the surface, seem kind a simple, no? The problem comes when people try to extrapolate from casual communication, where exclamation points (also called bangs in the biz, and frankly, that’s way easier to write, so I might just do that) are used with abandon, into formal writing; question marks seem to cause problems particularly when they’re used in dialog or with other punctuation. (If you want to know about using these inside quotation marks, go here for my piece about those. But you would never want to use a comma or period with either of these marks, even in dialog.)
Exclamation points are used after any emphatic interjection, or similar type of expression, to indicate strong emotions, a style of speaking, or surprise, disbelief, etc. It’s really pretty simple, but the problem for a lot of writers who aren’t really skilled at conveying these things is that they want to go overboard. It could be that writers who misuse or overuse them aren’t sure they can convey the dialog they hear in their head, but bangs are kinda like chocolate, sex, good Scotch, or pretty much anything else — too much of a good thing can end up making you lose appreciation for it. If you’re using a bang at the end of almost every line of dialog because, for instance, you know Willow speaks very excitedly and brightly, then you’re going to lose the emphasis a well-placed bang will give to her dialog (plus, it just gets sort of tough to read). If you think a piece of dialog like this is good, then, well, we should chat:
“I know! I thought that spell was pretty cool, too! And watching her head explode was really kind of an unexpected bonus!”
In something like that, I’d probably save that exclamation point in the middle sentence, to convey the feeling of Willow being excited, in that sentence most of all. A good writer will describe the character well enough so that you know their speech patterns, and you can kind of infer the sense of excitement from that, or through adjectives and adverbs: “I know — I thought that spell was pretty cool, too! And watching her head explode was really kind of an unexpected bonus,” Willow said brightly.
You do want to use bangs to emphasize words spoken with real power — Spike would shout, “Bugger!” or Jayne would bellow “Gorramit, Mal!” and so on (notice the bang on that second one comes after Mal, not after gorramit). And they’re a convenient shorthand for communicating the intensity that dialog often has in real life. In informal conversation, such as e-mail or LJ or something, we often use a number of exclamation points to really get across a sense of excitement and fun — but that’s something we don’t really want to do in formal writing. So while I’ll throw in multiple bangs when I’m saying to a friend, “Oh my God!!! I can’t believe I ran into James Marsters on Rodeo Drive!!!!” I don’t necessarily want to do that in formal writing, especially because I should be writing more carefully to convey my enthusiasm — so that one would be enough on either of those exclamations I made. Overuse of bangs is the hallmark of the teenage girl writer, and even if you are a teenage girl? Don’t write like one, especially not if you’re writing male slash, because guys just aren’t gonna be talking that way. I guarantee it.
Question marks seem to cause similar goofiness in people. Like, my god, if I’m really confused, I must need about four question marks to convey that! Which, again, fine in informal communication (“I can’t believe what Xander did to Anya last night — WTF???”), not so fine in a piece of fanfic. If you’re tempted, resist; trust me, your readers will thank you for it, besides assuming that you’re an adult and not a 13-year-old.
Question marks are actually pretty simple — use them after a direct question, but not an indirect one. Don’t freak, that’s not as grammary as it sounds. A direct question is, well, direct:
Did anyone else notice that Aeryn was just sucked into a wormhole?
Who in this room heard Giles ask, “Where did Willow teleport to?” (Really tricky! A direct question within another direct question means you put the mark inside the closing quotation mark. Now we’re into the hard core stuff!)
What is that spazz thing Fraser’s doing? dancing? epileptic seizures? (that’s a series of questions where you’re using the same subject with the same verb, so it’s kind of assumed you’re still talking about the same thing)
An indirect question is, well, indirect — you’re not asking anyone point blank, rather, you’re repeating or paraphrasing another question:
Lex wanted to know what Clark was doing in his bed.
Dawn asked Spike if he would be willing to die for her.
Sometimes you’ll run into a situation where your sentence seems like neither of the above, and it’s really easy, if you haven’t got the detail skills down yet, to get twisted around on those. But if your regular, non-questiony sentence contains a direct question inside it, you’ll probably want to put your question mark as close as possible to your questiony sentence. For instance, even though this first one is relating a question by someone else, since it’s in quotes, you’ll want to stick that mark in there, because it’s ending an actual direct question. And the second one has a kind of interpolated question in between the other sentences, so it would help your reader if you used the mark.
Nikita asked, “Did you bring me into Section One on purpose, or was it only circumstances that brought me here?”
When the two vampires ask themselves, What does hell really mean? we see their fears of the impossibility of absolution and redemption that consume their psyches.
The most important thing I can say about both of these, and the thing I run up against nearly every day in my job, is that there’s a real difference between casual use of both these marks and formal use such as fanfic or technical documentation, or anything written for more than just simple conversation. Make it easy on your reader, and don’t try to overuse or overemphasize these marks — when we read, we use punctuation mentally to tell us how things are being said, so if you go overboard on them or use them constantly when a simple period will do, you’re making your reader pause, think for a sec, and then move on. Their mind is having to work harder than they may want, and they could just hit delete and move on. The work should all be on your end — if you spend enough time crafting how something is said, and communicating it through sound characterization and description, then you won’t have to sprinkle bangs and question marks in as if they were chocolate chips.