Punctuation: To over-use or not to use at all?

In this age of email, text messaging, and instant messaging, it isn’t surprising that we are forced to find new and exciting ways to truly express ourselves. The messages we write and send each other electronically can easily be (and are often) misinterpreted and misunderstood. Part of this is due to the speed in which we send messages now. How many of us actually spellcheck or proofread messages before hitting the send button? I know I sometimes forget to, and thanks go out to Dan for pointing this out to me…again.

There are three newfangled writing trends that come to mind. The most obvious are the text message acronyms and short forms. They drive me berzerk and never make me LMAO, and that’s 4 sure. I do admit that under a time constraint they can be quite handy and most people (other than my parents and yours, I’m sure) can get the gist of what you are saying even if they don’t know exactly what the letters stand for. These short forms are annoying, but they work.

The second trend are the over-enthusiastic question mark and exclamation mark users!!!!!!!! I don’t get how using 6 or 7 exclamation marks in a row tells the reader that much more about the emotion in the sentence than one! The problem is that if one is a blatant punctuation abuser, they probably do it at the end of almost every sentence, in every paragraph!!!! Even if it’s not necessary!!!! It becomes a habit!!! I mean seriously, do they need to punctuate each sentence that way????? Every time I read one of these emails I experience sensory overload because of all that joy and excitement!!!!! I feel spent after reading the third sentence.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are those whove chosen to boycott punctuation altogether. each sentence begins without a capital letter, quotation marks are not used and in this case, you’d be lucky to run into any exclamation or question marks at all. its kind of like they are depressed and void of any emotion. (Notice I didn’t leave out the commas and periods. I just couldn’t. It was struggle enough not to capitalze anything).

Electronic messaging forces us to be creative. We need to convey our thoughts quickly and clearly, and apparently, without feeling the need to use all the necessary vowels. But I worry that this new way of communicating is going to steal our abilities from us the way the calculator ripped off my simple math skills (it’s terribly embarrassing). If proper written communication can almost go the way of the do-do so quickly, imagine what it’ll be like in 10 or 20 years. Scary. LOL.