Thurber Tonight: The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English Usage: VII. Exclamation Points and Colons

Even if he marries someone else and she doesn't sue,
he is likely to worry and fret, believing that she will.

The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide
to Modern English Usage

VII. Exclamation Points and Colons

I shall cite, to begin with, a few general "don'ts" for exclamation marks. One general "don't" could well cover the whole thing, for the exclamation mark is never actually necessary, but the shock of giving them all up at once might prove fatal to those unfortunate writers who have become addicts. Yet some excellent books have been writen without a single exclamation mark, among them The Art of Rodin, which is a collection of photographs of the sculptor's statues with a brief foreword by Louis Wenberg, or Weinberg. On the other hand, such eminent stylists and impeccable rhetoricians as Cabell bestrew their novels with exclamation points. Very likely Cabell, who is never really excited about anything, leaves them out, and the linotypers put them in. The whole fabric of English usage, I might say in passing, is complicated by linotypers. They frequently play a game with an author, by mail, similar to chess. The author sends in a manuscript without exclamation marks, the linotyper puts them in, the author takes them out in proof, the linotyper puts them back in, together with a couple of etaoins. That's pretty much inside publishing-house stuff, however, and any further comment on it here -- or anywhere else -- wouldn't do much good. The "don'ts" with which I am concerned are aimed at the layman, the man and woman letter writer.

Don't use an exclamation mark in a moment of anger. If you insert one in a fit of temper, lay aside the letter until morning. You will be surprised how silly it will seem then -- not only the exclamation mark but the whole letter. That brings us to the colon, or if it doesn't, we'll drag in the colon. It is my contention that a colon could almost always be used in place of an exclamation point. Its use as a symbol of passionate expression is not, I'll grant you, well known, and yet it lends itself to finer shadings of excitement than the exclamation mark, which after all is a hybrid composed, on most typewriters, by striking, successively, the period, the back-spacer, and the apostrophe. This process of synthesis usually takes from six to eight seconds and is very frequently complicated by accidentally striking the upper-case shift-lock key, thus setting the machine so that it writes solely in capitals. In this way a person, after making his exclamation mark, will sometimes go on to write six or eight sentences in capital letters without realizing he is doing it. He then either has to go back over those sentences and draw a diagonal line across each letter -- the proofreader's sign for "restore to lower case" -- or else, if he lets the capitalized words stand, he must enclose a separate note explaining what happened. All this takes time, and diverts a writer's mind from what he was trying to say. Furthermore, by following his exclamation mark with several lines of capitalized sentences, screaming and bawling across the page, he has made the exclamation mark seem ridiculous and ineffective. The best way to avoid all these complications is to use a pen or pencil. This is, however, the era of the typewriter -- even love letters are written on typewriters. Thus it will be helpful to learn that the colon, which is typed by striking only one key, can be employed in place of the exclamation mark in almost any given sentence where the emotion one wishes to express is of an amatory nature.

Even love letters are written on typewriters.

Take the sentence "You are wonderful!" That's trite, and it's made triter by the exclamation point, but if one writes it thus: "You are: wonderful," it's certainly not trite and it has a richness that the other hadn't or hasn't -- "hadn't" is better, I guess. Nothing so closely resembles the catch in the voice of the lover as that very colon. Instead of shouting the word "wonderful," as the exclamation point does, it forces a choking pause before that word, thus giving an effect of tense, nervous endearment, which is certainly what the writer is after. Of course whether he should be after that effect, no matter how the sentence is punctuated, is a separate problem. Sentences of the kind, especially when written by a gentleman to a lady, are never altogether safe. They are almost sure to lead to some further encomium, to some definitely compromising confession. If the gentleman then marries someone else, the lady may sue. Even if he marries someone else and she doesn't sue, he is likely to worry and fret, believing that she will, and the effect on his general health will be about the same as if she did.

I think that Fowler in his Modern English Usage does not discriminate as carefully as he should between what is proper and safe in exclamations and what is proper and dangerous. He makes several groupings of proper usages, one of them being "You miserable coward!, You little dear!" Obviously there's a difference in possible ultimate effect here. The former could easily drift into a suit for breach of promise, and is therefore not safe. Of his other groupings of recommended usages I should most assuredly warn any gentleman against writing to any woman any part of the list which Fowler gives as No. 4. This includes: "What a difference it makes!, What I suffered!, How I love you!" If one is going to use a whole group, I'd say take his No. 5, which is, in full: "Not another word!, If only I could!, That it should come to this!, Much care you!, Pop goes the weasel!, A fine friend you have been!" That is not only safe -- it leans over backwards. All correspondence would probably be ended after such a letter, and that is always rather more desirable than deplorable.

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