What's your punctuation mark?

Perhaps only editor types get excited about taking quizzes matching their personalities with those of popular punctuation marks. But hey, we all have our quirks, right?

And that's probably why I loved this tweet by musician Jon Peter Lewis, "I don't like the exclamation point. It's too bossy. It's the only punctuation that tells you how to feel."

I totally agree. I almost despise the exclamation point and will always take it out of material I'm editing—or at least strongly debate its removal. Yes, there is obviously a use for the exclamation point, but it is too often used as Lewis describes, to tell you how to feel. The exclamation point should convey something that is already present in the text and should support what you would already sense reading the sentence. Sticking an exclamation point doesn't (again, generalities) automatically make the sentence and topic exciting, nor does it automatically make the reader THINK the sentence is exciting.

In fact, I almost get angry (OK, maybe only ever so slightly annoyed) when I read a sentence that ends in an exclamation point that DOESN'T reflect surprise, excitement, etc. Maybe try spicing up the information itself and not relying so much on the end punctuation....

I just did a quick Google search on the topic and found an article entitled, "Punctuation Never to Use—the Exclamation Mark." It notes that "never" is a strong word, but that "without adequate support for its selection, an exclamation point will often weaken" what the writer is trying to impart.

Then an article about business writing notes that "Rather than using exclamation points that distract, you can use words to convey the same urgency or excitement that you were trying to convey with the exclamation point. You can put meaning in your words and not just create a visual, which is really all an exclamation point does."

P.S. I'm loving finding that others have exclamation point disgruntles too. Oh man, I'm such a nerd.

I decided long ago that my favorite punctuation mark was the semi-colon (the em-dash is a close second). The responses I usually get: "Hmm, maybe I should learn how to use a semi-colon" and "Whaat? There's more than one dash?" Now, I never really thought that I might be choosing those punctuation marks because of personality connections, but I'm sure you can imagine my delight when I took the "What Punctuation Mark Are You?" quiz on Facebook and was personally deemed a semi-colon. Booyah.

The description: You are a semicolon. Never boring, always complex, able to comprehend and synthesize multiple pieces of information. You are good at making conversation, and you are always on the lookout for new ideas.

I like it.

I probably am very often kinda boring, but at the same time, I always want to be doing and experiencing new things and accepting new challenges—making LIFE un-boring. I love finding new information and researching, processing and then sharing the new things I learn about. I'm not always a good conversationalist, since I'm recently uncovering how shy I actually am, but hey, I can be social and outgoing depending on the situation, plus, when I'm able to embrace my confidence, I think I'm pretty good at relating with other people and their experiences. And uh, yes, I'm definitely ALWAYS on the lookout for new ideas...ideas of any kind on any subject.

Were any of you lucky enough to take this same quiz? What did you think of the results. Any thoughts on exclamation points? Don't tell me I'm the only one that thinks about this!! :)