!!!!!

While reading an amusing story in the UK Telegraph called “Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe”, this one jumped out at me because I see so many emails with this flaw:

10. The Law of Exclamation
First recorded in an article by Lori Robertson at FactCheck.org in 2008, this states: “The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters.”

According to Pratchett, five exclamation marks is an indicator of “someone who wears their underwear on the outside”.

It is reminiscent of the claim in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels that the more exclamation marks someone uses in writing, the more likely they are to be mentally unbalanced.

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Does your unedited writing tends to be heavy with exclamation points (it’s so easy to shift with the little right finger and hit the 1 key!)?

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Mine does and I think it indicates my emotional involvement with the material. Edits almost always involve replacing several ! with periods.

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Don’t let your underwear show in your emails – tell good stories and connect with your market and you won’t have to resort to trying to inject excitement with punctuation.

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