Tone!!!

January 12, 2024 12:30 AM

When we talk about exclamation points, people often think we’re talking about tone. But what goes unsaid is that tone is the performance of niceness or seriousness. It is the work of matching sentence structure to gender norms, industry norms, workplace norms, and generational norms. It is switching norms dozens if not hundreds of times a day, as you shift from text to email, from group chat to professional Teams Message. And we are doing this Tone Work exponentially more than at any point in history. from A Theory of the Modern Exclamation Point!

Behold! The exclamation point!!! [CW: Trump tweets]
A–Brief–Literary History of the Exclamation Point (!)
How to Exclaim! [Previously]

More previously!

posted by chavenet (23 comments total)

"NORM!!!"
--- frequently heard on "Cheers"
posted by zaixfeep at 1:26 AM on January 12 [7 favorites]

I'm curious how specific this professional! exclamation mark! is to corporate America?

I definitely use them to soften my tone too, but the place I work for was bought by an American company and the emails I get from corporate these days are so, so strange to me.

For anyone who's watched Ten Percent, (the British version of Call My Agent), the emails I get are *exactly* like the caricatured American corporate people in that show.

Every. Single. Message, even the most mundane confirmation of a meeting is "So Exciting! We are just thrilled! to confirm the meeting, we can't wait!! to discuss this with you! So exciting! Wonderful. Yay!"

I don't quite know how to respond. Should I match this exuberance?

But this stuff is fascinating. How do we (or at least, some of us) collectively decide that an exclamation mark softens tone?

I remember the moment when it occurred to me that using a full stop after a sentence in a text message might come across as abrupt. A few days later, I saw a online discussion about it and yes, apparently, full stops can, in fact, be a signal that you're angry.

How had I intuited this?
posted by Zumbador at 2:01 AM on January 12 [3 favorites]

I was much more distraught to discover that younger generations read ellipsis as “word(s) unsaid” and not pause for effect than I have ever been by someone’s use of exclamation points (or lack thereof).
posted by pulposus at 3:08 AM on January 12 [6 favorites]

I'm curious how specific this professional! exclamation mark! is to corporate America?

As an anal-retentive Limey I'd say very much so. Here in Old Blighty, over-use of exclamation marks is considered immature, regardless of gender.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 4:50 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

I don't quite know how to respond. Should I match this exuberance?

I don't think so? Not if it doesn't feel natural? What I find in my own email conversations with coworkers in other countries is, I don't really miss their exclamation marks--but I do miss it if an American coworker ends a sentence with the deadening emotional flatness of a period. Or worse, no punctuation at all! I don't know how people function without any sort of punctuation at the end. They seem very bitter and cold. (And yes, the less said about ellipsis people, the better...) (especially the ones who only use two periods for the ellipsis..) (but they redeem themselves if they use, like, a lot of them..........)
posted by mittens at 5:06 AM on January 12 [3 favorites]

The two periods people just got screwed by Microsoft when were revising their email and the smart selection logic highlighted everything but the final punctuation in the sentence they were deleting.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 5:37 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

While I certainly have no quibble with any of Anne Helen Peterson’s points about exclamation marks, and her observations about the increasingly narrow tightrope that even constructing a simple email can entail for folks at increasing levels of marginalization are entirely accurate in my experience, the definition of tone she gives is incomplete. She describes the aspects of tone relevant to the rest of her post (which makes sense, of course), but your tone is how you perform any metatextural layer: any affect, not just niceness; and any socioeconomic position, not just a high-status one associated with seriousness.
posted by eviemath at 6:05 AM on January 12 [8 favorites]

Also, she describes code switching but maybe hasn’t heard the term before so asked up her own term for the tone-related aspects of code switching?
posted by eviemath at 6:07 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

I learned a long time ago in a corporate training re business culture in France and Germany specifically: no matter how many emails you have sent that day, every one should start, "Dear [soandso],".
posted by atomicstone at 6:12 AM on January 12 [4 favorites]

On the flip side, it is wonderful to be able to indicate to somebody how annoyed you are by just stripping out all the exclamation points you would usually use.
posted by joannemerriam at 7:08 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

On the flip side, it is wonderful to be able to indicate to somebody how annoyed you are by just stripping out all the exclamation points you would usually use.

I deem thee not worthy of my supply of exclamation points!!! whoops.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:28 AM on January 12 [6 favorites]

On the flip side, it is wonderful to be able to indicate to somebody how annoyed you are by just stripping out all the exclamation points you would usually use.

(watch very closely for the removal of this sign)


I like the title of this post. It makes me feel like Tony and Toni got raptured but they couldn't take their exclamation points with them.
posted by aws17576 at 7:56 AM on January 12 [6 favorites]

How quickly we’ve forgotten Tony! Toni! Toné!
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:07 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

Last year I resolved to eliminate tone exclamation points from my emails slacks and texts because they looked silly and fake. I don’t think anyone has noticed, which is what I was hoping for.

I feel great.
posted by notyou at 9:11 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

Exclamation marks arrived at some point (no pun intended) in my former office, and, quickly, almost everyone adopted them. And escalation was rapid. We went from "Thanks!" to "Thanks!!" to Thanks!!!" in less than a year. Along with the hyperbolization of thanks for even the most mundane act performed: "Thank you soo much!! You are a rockstar!!!" There's a grating insincerity, to my ears, about thanking someone for posting something online with the same fervor one would thank them for fishing a child out of a well. And, as noted, if one replies to an exclamation-point-pocked email with periods, one sounds hostile/cold/distant. I don't know, however, if the exclamation points were, in fact, done performatively, to convey "niceness" or "femininity," as the article notes, given that many of these messages were between women of roughly the same age.

Generally, the divide was younger/older, as my colleagues, men and women, Boomers and GenXers, commented on the introduction and spread of exclamation points as being a younger-generation phenomenon. Relatedly, I wonder if the exclamation marks are part of the creeping infantilization of the Internet that I've noticed over the last 10? years, whereby people describe aspects of their adult life in a breathless tone that would, previously, have been the domain of 9-year-olds at a Toys Я Us. The "omg-this-is-the-best-thing-evar!!!!" of pretty much anything, no matter how mundane or commonplace, and not offered in an ironic way, either.
posted by the sobsister at 10:10 AM on January 12 [3 favorites]

I provide a service through a website where my main interface with clients -- mostly ad agencies and corporate media production departments -- is on-site messaging that appears like a chat app rather than an email, so messages tend to be extremely brief. Every time I send a message -- every time! -- I find myself either adding or excising an exclamation point in order to massage the tone. Do I want to appear authoritative? Servile?

Luckily most of the people I work with are pretty chill, US- or Canada-based creatives, so the general read is: more exclamation points, which is good, because that's my natural mode. When I have a client from outside North America, the process is more fraught. Will I seem like an unserious simpleton if I use too many (any?) exclamation points? Will I seem like a humorless dolt if I avoid them entirely?

I am constantly overthinking my exclamation point usage.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:13 AM on January 12 [2 favorites]

If I'm starting a new job I won't use them until I get a feel for that office/ group's norms. It's kind of like any workplace thing, same as "everyone does or doesn't talks about sports" or "we do or don't brag about drinking a lot."

It's regional, too; Texas was definitely a more exclamation -point-prone-place than Colorado and definitely than the East Coast.


As someone on the hunt for a new job I have definitely been thinking about my online tone.
posted by emjaybee at 12:40 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

When texting, or emailing, with friends or relations, I use exclamation points, because it's how I think (same reason I use parentheses, every thought has additional bonus thoughts free for a limited time!) At work, I mostly don't, that irritating professionalism thing. Fuck, I'm not a goddamned professional, if you want one then pay me commensurately. Sorry, carry on.
posted by evilDoug at 6:55 PM on January 12 [2 favorites]

As a Brit, there's a dryness and sarcasm to a flat, unexclaimed sentence (how much I wish we'd adopted carets to show arched eyebrows and rolling eyes of sarcasm: ^yeah right, like that's gonna work^) so, for exclamations, I add a single when I sincerely want to show enthusiasm like: "Thanks!"

I get that other users of English expect different tone to a flat sentence. A few years ago I read a polemic by someone I've forgotten who didn't understand the concept of psychological projection and thought everyone was seething with rage, poor guy. I can't recall but would expect he sees many exclamation marks as a precursor to violence.

In summary, it's a language of contrasts.
posted by k3ninho at 4:55 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]

i use a pilcrow to express rage in electronic communications.¶¶ it's highly effective.¶¶¶¶
posted by logicpunk at 6:29 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]

The "omg-this-is-the-bestEST-thing-evar!!!!" TFIFY

Many years ago, I studied various books, trying to learn how to write clearly. One piece of advice someone gave me was this: When you want to use the word "very," use the word "fucking," instead. Then go back and delete all the fuckings, except for the ones you use as gerunds. The same author (whose name I don't remember) said that English is poor in synonyms but rich with words that establish "tone." Looking at it from that perspective, it's easy to see how "shit" and "excrement" would have more than a synonymous relationship. Take a look at your thesaurus now and then--see if you actually believe "fiesty" is just a synonym for "hot-headed." Your Grammarly program can lead you astray.

My native tongue (English) is slipping away, gaining speed with every new device that purports to help us communicate. I am only slightly miffed when trying to decipher emails that don't seem to have punctuation or don't use capital letters. Misplaced modifiers are (more or less) easy to figure out, but they break the flow of the text. My list of grievances is not endless--I could go on, but I won't.

This article advocates the use of an exclamation point as diction rather than punctuation (as do some of my fellow MeFites). Why not? English evolves, and it sports remarkably fluid grammatical features.

I rest easy knowing that most of the people in my email chains still use the rapidly aging English in which I swam growing up. Still, I often see the "lol" at the end of some sentences that don't have even a whiff of humor about them. In the supermarket the other day, I actually heard someone say "O-M-G" out loud. I'm not one who tries to buck the tide, so carry on with the neologisms, but please spare me from trying to translate emoticons. Someone used on in an email not long ago that I took to mean "a scoop of chocolate ice cream." It was not.

To sum up, I thought an exclamation point was an intensifier, not a feminized.

BTW, Henry James rules!
posted by mule98J at 7:15 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]

I'd observe that American email culture in general tends to adopt a more casual, conversational tone so exclamation marks often get tossed in to convey cheerful enthusiasm. European norms tend to hew closer to formal correspondence (I was surprised to learn that some would consider starting an email without some sort of greeting or ending it without a perfunctory "regards," as rude)

Funnily I think a lot of first line customer-facing types are more likely tend to embrace heavy usage of exclamation marks and lots of explanatory text - managerial/executive types tend to be more off-the-cuff and succinct
posted by ndr at 2:27 PM on January 14

Part of my job involves writing short explanations of how to use office applications. My default style is to bold and capitalise any words that represent an action in the application. I recently upset a colleague using this style because she read that approach as patronising. I can understand this, but it was frustrating to me.

The same colleague also started the first communication of every day with "Hello, how are you?" and would get upset if I didn't answer before getting into the actual business. I pretty quickly resented the extra work I felt she was making me do in constructing a suitable reply.

I prefer to just sign my name at the end of emails with colleagues I work with regularly, any additional sign off seems supefluous to me. But I often agonise over whether this comes across as rude.
posted by alfhild at 10:40 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]