Punctuation Errors: Multiple Punctuation Marks

Sometime ago Maeve wrote a brilliant post titled “Let the Word do the Work.” On the article she was manifesting hes despair towards the common use of redundancies like “return back” or “speeding too fast.”

The conclusion is straight forward: it’s as if people don’t trust a word to mean what it means. The same concept applies to punctuation. Ever saw someone write that something was “absolutely amazing!!!”? What about when someone refers to a “dead silence…….”?

The exclamation mark, the ellipsis and the question mark have clear roles inside the English language, and you should trust them. Increasing the number of exclamation or question marks at the end of a sentence might appear to increase the overall emphasis, but in reality it just makes your text ugly and informal.

Notice that the ellipsis used at the end of a sentence should be followed by a period, for a total of four dots. On other cases limit yourself to three dots. Exclamation and question marks should be used only once.

This is a very simple rule, but the horde of over-emotional teens coming from MySpace and similar calls for a reminder.

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Daniel Scocco on September 24, 2007 | Filed Under Punctuation

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12 Responses to “Punctuation Errors: Multiple Punctuation Marks”

Alan on September 25th, 2007 12:01 am

Personally I think it’s down to personal opinion (though anything over three is most certainly overkill). Sometimes you need to add a little more emphasis, just as you may require to deploy both an exclamation and a query - ‘What!?’

As for accusing teens, I have seen English teachers equally as ‘guilty’.
Daniel on September 25th, 2007 12:21 am

Alan, the exclamation and question marks together do have a place, that is correct.

I do not agree with using more than one exclamation or question mark for emphasis, though.

I guess one could let it pass in very informal contexts, like an SMS over the phone. But that is it.
T. Page on September 25th, 2007 2:17 am

I have a question on basically the same topic. When you are writing dialogue and you must end with a comma such as: “Blah Blah blah,” said Jim. Is there a reason the comma is placed within the brackets? The comma would, generally, not be a part of the proper punctuation of whatever is being said (if written down). Why do we not write the comma outside the quotation marks?

Thanks.
Daniel on September 25th, 2007 9:47 am

T. Page, I will cover that on the next “Punctuation Errors” post. Stay tuned, but basically it has to do with style, American English puts the punctuation inside the quotation marks while British English puts it outside.
Geoff Foster on September 25th, 2007 11:40 am

While we’re about it, what about the proper lead up to a quotation?

That is, which of the following is preferable?

a. The student stood up and said “Please may I be excused?”

b. The student stood up and said, “Please may I be excused?”

c. The student stood up and said: “Please may I be excused?”

d. The student stood up, and said “Please may I be excused?”
Georg on September 25th, 2007 12:19 pm

Unfortunately this horde of over-emotional teens coming from MySpace doesn’t read this blog.
Daniel on September 25th, 2007 1:16 pm

Geoff, I would go with option b).

I will ask Maeve for his take on this though.

Thanks for stopping by.
Scott on September 25th, 2007 1:21 pm

I’m not a fan of using exclamation points in business writing, adhering instead to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s dictum that using an exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. Any thoughts on that?
Henry Imler on September 25th, 2007 2:45 pm

What happens if a book title that contains a question mark comes at the end of a indicative sentence?
Alan on September 25th, 2007 5:56 pm

Daniel - in that case, what about multiple interrobangs‽

I’m still not sold against multiple question/exclamation marks. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not something I use anything but sparingly, but I think they can be an easy way of shoring up tone.

That sort of tone is rarely required in professional/business writing, so it’s fair to say it has no place there, but in communications I believe it may. When writing speech there’s the excuse that the speech tag or description could convey much of what multiple punctuation may, but that’s not so in general communications - for instance an e-mail which is neither overly-colloquial nor formal.
Daniel on September 30th, 2007 3:57 pm

Scott, I am a fan of Scott Fitzgerald, but I am sure if we could avoid using exclamation points altogether. They do have a role, even if not an important one in business writing as you mentioned.

Henry, I would put that book title inside exclamation marks like this:

I want to present the book titled “There and Back Again!”.

But I am not sure if this would not be considered a double punctuation mark, and thus wrong. I will research it.