Current guidelines for exclamation mark usage?

Sorry, Patty. I strongly dislike them.

Patty, I'm sorry if I've offended you...

Or perhaps you are asking this sincerely...

I'll assume the best, and expand a little on my previous reply!

As you can see, I use exclamation marks in daily life, but when I come across them in fiction, they almost always seem as though the author is trying too hard to make their point.

For instance, if they're said to emphasise something funny... That, to me, is like the author laughing at their own joke, or saying, 'geddit? ', or nudging me in the ribs.

If it's used to emphasise emotion, that's even worse. Conveying emotion through words is REALLY difficult. It's almost an art form in itself. Putting an exclamation mark on the end of a sentence seems like dodging the whole issue of how to move / touch / grip the author without being corny.

Could you possibly quote from a novel where you saw and liked its use?

One of my favourite novels! Lol

Whose guidelines? Whose rules?

I suppose it depends on how you use them, if they're at the end of dialog rather than narrative, but the damned things exist in our language to be used. If you think they belong because they serve some purpose in your story, then they belong. Most readers haven't boned up on the precious rules many writers think are carved in stone. They probably won't pause a moment on an exclamation point (except to know what its purpose is)!!

Well, I did a bunch of searches in the e-books I own on Kobo Desktop, and 30-200/novel (these are probably 80k on average) seems typical for the stuff I read. I am not sure I have ever read a book and thought there were too many exclamation marks...nor have I ever noted such a complaint about my work.

I don't pay attention too much to them when I write. Most of the ones I use are in dialogue.

So, you might do a search on exclamation marks in your document and briefly consider whether each one is necessary, but I wouldn't stress about it too much.

Pastelnudes said:

Could you possibly quote from a novel where you saw and liked its use?

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Patty said:

I'm reading Wuthering Heights at the moment.

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Ah, but styles change so much. And I think (I really do) that there's no actual rule about how many !s are allowed per novel. It's that at this time, for your genre, it's more/less acceptable to use more/fewer exclamation points in general. Something to be aware of, but only in the sense that you stay aware of other personal tics in your writing.

Pastelnudes said:

As you can see, I use exclamation marks in daily life, but when I come across them in fiction, they almost always seem as though the author is trying too hard to make their point.

For instance, if they're said to emphasise something funny... That, to me, is like the author laughing at their own joke, or saying, 'geddit? ', or nudging me in the ribs.

If it's used to emphasise emotion, that's even worse. Conveying emotion through words is REALLY difficult. It's almost an art form in itself. Putting an exclamation mark on the end of a sentence seems like dodging the whole issue of how to move / touch / grip the author without being corny.

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I understand your point outside of dialogue, but not within dialogue. And in my own writing, about 95%+of exclamation marks are within dialogue, and from a quick look through various e-books by other authors, close to 100% of exclamation marks being in dialogue is typical...

I am in the process of writing a scene, which is more than a little exclamation mark happy. The scene, however, calls for them. For the moment, I am putting them in wherever I please. Once I get to the revision stage, however, I am going to make sure they earn their corn.

I follow Leonard Elmore rule about exclamation mark: one for every 10,000 words. Personally, I think people tend to over use them.

Context can often negate most usages of an exclamation mark.

When overused it eventually becomes meaningless.

I sound obsessed! I'm not For instance, I use CAPS when a character is shouting; other writers might hate that.

Patty, I haven't read your work, so I can't really comment. You seem to be getting no negative feedback about this, so it's not a problem.

For me, I do still feel that - on the whole - the writing itself should be controlling emphasis.

I'm not sure a specific ratio of exclamation points to words makes sense, IMHO. You're going to have more exclamation points in, say, a wacky children's action story than in an atmospheric, literary tragedy, for instance.

Use an exclamation point where there's a need for an exclamation point. That's it.

That said, it's easy to overuse them, like adjectives or adverbs or said-bookisms, but as you write more you'll develop an eye for it. But boiling it down to a ratio is like boiling it down to a rigid writing Rule, and Rules are meaningless if you don't understand the why of them... which is basically the same thing as using something only when there's a need to use it, and not using it when there's not a need, and you just have to clock the writing hours and develop the awareness to tell the difference.

I think the current best practice is to minimize exclamation marks in narrative. But in dialogue, well, it really depends on the story and the characters. A very excitable character may need a lot!

And if you're reproducing someone's texts or email, there may be lots and lots of them. In current online speech, an exclamation mark is often simply a signifier of friendly intent -- as opposed to the period, which is often read as hostile or even aggressive.

Patty said:

I'm puzzled now, because it looks like she didn't remove any. She left all of them. I know a lot of folks say no more than one ! per novel. This seems silly to me, but I'm willing to listen. .

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That does seem silly. I can certainly think of successful novels, including some that have won awards, that use exclamation marks much more liberally than that. I've never heard of any "rule" that you should use one exclamation mark per novel.

That sounds like something someone who doesn't like them at all would make up arbitrarily--a personal guideline, perhaps. For whatever reason, there is no shortage of people who state personal preferences as "rules" in writing (an endeavor that has remarkably few hard-and-fast rules). There is also no shortage of people who hear advice or personal preferences given and take them as rules when they weren't meant as such.

I think exclamation mark usage is one of those elements of narrative voice or style. I see them used more in YA fiction, for instance.

I'd argue that use is excessive (to the point of becoming annoying) when they become a sort of "crutch" a writer uses to avoid conveying relative emotional intensity in other ways--word choice, context, character internals and so on.

So I'd argue you should think of them as a highly noticeable or flavorful spice. Use a pinch here and there, when you really want to call attention to the intensity of someone's words or thoughts (via narrative), but if you toss too many of them they will, at best, cease to have much meaning or, at worst, become highly annoying to many readers.

I find "The Editor's Blog" has good, commonsense advice about most writing issues, stylistic as well as grammatical. This is what she has to say about exclamation mark usage.

There’s no correct number of exclamation points per book, but you might find that you don’t need more than a dozen or two in an 85,000-word story. One story may require ten times that many while another story may not need even one.* The use of exclamation points is part of a writer’s style and is a reflection of the needs of a particular story and the genre. But the point is to be deliberate about their use, using them only as necessary and not as a decorative flourish. Use word choices, sentence structure, and character dialogue and actions to create the mood or tone necessary for the scene. Don’t throw exclamation-point confetti onto a page of text and assume that the punctuation will do the work of creating tension or excitement.

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https://theeditorsblog.net/2018/01/12/slapped-silly-by-exclamation-points/

My main thing about them is what Terry Pratchett wrote (repeatedly).

"Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind." -- in Eric

More here: https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Multiple_exclamation_marks

Now I really want to make one of those lines my sig... First, figure out how to change the sig...

I can rarely go more than a page without using at least one, try to limit myself to three where I can control myself, and can definitely have blocks of dialogue where I use five or more at the end of each sentence.

Stytch said:

"Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind."

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Almost certainly true.