An Argument for Exclamation Points (!!!)

Have you ever been so excited you could hardly stand it?!

The easiest way to express excitement in writing is with one or more exclamation points. But when you learned to write in high school or college, you probably learned to keep those pesky marks to a minimum, so as not to seem unprofessional. But once you’re out in the real world, doing a lot less paper writing and a lot more texting, direct messaging, and emailing, the same rules need not apply.

If every time you go to type an exclamation point, the voice of your high school English teacher yells that it’s not appropriate, it’s time to shut that voice down. Exclamation points are great, useful tools for expression in business and casual conversation. Here’s why.


Exclamation points set the tone!

If you communicate through email at work, you’ve probably typed out a quick response to a colleague, pressed “Send,” and then realized how serious your message sounded.
Exclamation points can help save you from this! Even in a business setting, they can help express excitement, relieve some pressure from a message or lighten the mood.
Let’s say you’re meeting with a colleague about a project you two worked on to talk about next steps. Your colleague sends you a message that says,
Looking forward to it.
Because you can’t hear the way they said it, you might be left to wonder whether or not your colleague is actually looking forward to it. You can assume that colleague just as excited about continuing with the project as you are if they modify their punctuation:
Looking forward to it!
Now let’s say you just let that colleague know that Beyoncé is going to be at that meeting. You’d probably appreciate a response like “Looking forward to it!!!”