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It's acceptable, but should be reserved for rare occasions where it's absolutely necessary to keep the flow of the scene going. Overuse of this type of punctutation would indeed make your writing l...
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#2: Post edited
by
Secespitus
·
2019-12-19T22:59:18Z (almost 5 years ago)
It's acceptable, but should be reserved for rare occasions where it's absolutely necessary to keep the flow of the scene going. Overuse of this type of punctutation would indeed make your writing look childish. As other answers have already outlined it's something that's becoming more common, but is still used very rarely and only in certain kinds of writing. If you are writing something that takes itself very seriously you should probably avoid it wherever possible and try to come up with something else. It's perfetly fine to use it rarely in caricatural writing, but for something that tries to be serious you are better off trying to find a different way of expressing what your characters feel. For example in your example you could instead try to rephrase it to something like "I can't believe this! How could you fire all three of them? Are you out of your mind?" - by starting with a sentence with an exclamation mark you show that the character is currently screaming, which makes it easier for the reader to know that the following questions are most likely not asked in a soothing low voice.
- It's acceptable, but should be reserved for rare occasions where it's absolutely necessary to keep the flow of the scene going. Overuse of this type of punctutation would indeed make your writing look childish. As other answers have already outlined it's something that's becoming more common, but is still used very rarely and only in certain kinds of writing. If you are writing something that takes itself very seriously you should probably avoid it wherever possible and try to come up with something else. It's perfectly fine to use it rarely in caricatural writing, but for something that tries to be serious you are better off trying to find a different way of expressing what your characters feel. For example in your example you could instead try to rephrase it to something like "I can't believe this! How could you fire all three of them? Are you out of your mind?" - by starting with a sentence with an exclamation mark you show that the character is currently screaming, which makes it easier for the reader to know that the following questions are most likely not asked in a soothing low voice.
#1: Initial revision
by
Secespitus
·
2019-12-19T11:59:13Z (almost 5 years ago)
It's acceptable, but should be reserved for rare occasions where it's absolutely necessary to keep the flow of the scene going. Overuse of this type of punctutation would indeed make your writing look childish. As other answers have already outlined it's something that's becoming more common, but is still used very rarely and only in certain kinds of writing. If you are writing something that takes itself very seriously you should probably avoid it wherever possible and try to come up with something else. It's perfetly fine to use it rarely in caricatural writing, but for something that tries to be serious you are better off trying to find a different way of expressing what your characters feel. For example in your example you could instead try to rephrase it to something like "I can't believe this! How could you fire all three of them? Are you out of your mind?" - by starting with a sentence with an exclamation mark you show that the character is currently screaming, which makes it easier for the reader to know that the following questions are most likely not asked in a soothing low voice.