Do you use too many exclamation marks? Stop it!!!

My newest post at Exordium:

In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Katherine Bindley writes of the debate over whether exclamation marks are overused. It is an issue teachers in particular should read, they being among the most cavalier of exclamation mark users. 

How many times have you seen a note from a teacher that reads, “You did a great job!!!” or “It’s so good to have you in the class!!!” “Awesome!!!”

Let’s admit it: There are some teachers who end literally every sentence with an exclamation mark. 

It isn’t as if we are more enthusiastic than we used to be. John Keilman at the Chicago Tribune writes: 

This grammatical sea change has been a rough transition for a lot of us old timers, given that our teachers trained us to regard exclamation points as the Donald Trump of punctuation: loud, overbearing and best endured in small doses. Using them for anything but the most passionate interjection was the sign of a lunatic or an airhead. 

But oh, how times have changed!!!

Read the rest here.