What the !

[It's recycle Saturday. The following post is from November 3, 2005 and has been properly composted. --ALG]

There it sits—your manuscript on the desk of an acquisition editor. A glance at the editor tells you she is tired, her eyes are red from reading manuscripts from people who are certain they are destined for the New York Times Bestseller List. The manuscript before yours was awful, or worse, wonderful. Now is judgment time. The Sword of Damocles glints in the glow of her reading light and hovers over your lovely printed proposal. A decision will be made in the next few minutes.

What does the editor see as she peels back the last page of the summary and reads the first page of your sample chapter? Hopefully, she doesn’t see a boatload of these: !!!!!!.

Sometimes a publisher hires me to fix or rewrite a manuscript and one of the first things I do is perform an exclamation-point-ectomy. I recently read a book by a well-known author who must have scored a bargain on the tall punctuation mark because one page had over twenty !s peppered in the text. I know, I counted. I wondered where the editor had gone. That’s the problem with being a famous author; editors stop editing your work (or perhaps prohibited from doing so).

The exclamation point has a place on the page, but not often. As punctuation goes, it’s a big gun and should only be used when the situation demands it, and when no other method will work.

Too many !’s will make your work look amateurish. Some have told me, “Well, that’s the editor's job.” No, it’s the writer's job. It’s also the responsibility of the new writer to impress the editor who will be deciding if you deserve a showing in the pub board meeting or a form rejection letter.

Little things matter. So when it comes to exclamation points—Stop it! Pretend they cost you $20 each! Use them sparingly! Too many are distracting! They draw the reader’s attention from the story you labored over! Get it!!!!!

Small things matter.

Comments

[Richard Mabry]

Alton, Good advice. Couldn't agree more!