My brother has lectured me about my overuse of exclamation points in my writing! I told him that one of my New Year's resolutions was to guard against it! [Yes, of course I realize that I just wrote two sentences and ended each with an exclamation point!]
Obviously, I have failed my resolution but I shall try to follow the admonition of one of my literary heroes Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald:
The URBAN DICTIONARY has a word for the problem: BANGORRHEA. See below.
bangorrhea
1) Overusing exclamation points in a vain and failing attempt to make your writing sound more exciting. Trying to put more "bang" in your prose, but looking instead like you have exclamation point diarrhea.
"Checking in with a bad case of 'bangorrhea' -- the official grammedical term for exclamation-point overdose -- is Kanye West. In a single blog post, West used 188 exclamation points. At least we think it was 188. We tried counting and the ordeal made our eyeballs twitch." --Martha Brockenbrough, MSN Encarta columnist
1 comment:
Isn't it always good to have a word for one's "condition"? ML
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