Syntactically Exclamatory
The exclamation mark has been hunted to near extinction. It was the grammar teachers who did it, but I blame the little girls.
Schoolchildren learned that exclamation marks are never necessary, and often wrong. So from a pure game-theory perspective, the schoolchild’s only logical course of action was to avoid them entirely. That habit persists into adulthood. It’s very, very rare to find a professional writer who uses them.
If you picture the situation from the grammar teacher’s perspective, it’s easy to see how the rule developed. The problem, as I said, is with little girls. Now please understand: I have nothing personally against little girls. In fact, I’m quite fond of them. Most of them spend most of their time brimming with hope, enthusiasm, and a love of life. And that’s very, very sweet. Unfortunately, at that age they have limited skill with the language, so they can’t effectively express the boundless sunshine within their souls. Yearning to express the sunshine in their souls, they cannot resist the exclamation mark.
For most little girls, everything is an exclamation: “Hi!!! How are you?!? I am great!!!” More exclamation marks mean more excitement, of course, but there’s a law of diminishing returns. At some point, it’s best to shift to replacing the dots on the exclamation marks with little hearts to express truly unbearable levels of enthusiam. And since enthusiasm generally equals attractiveness, even those little girls who don’t feel these high levels of enthusiasm feel compelled to fake it.
So we can hardly blame the grammar teachers for clamping down on exclamation marks. When someone’s job includes reading children’s essays for a living, I won’t begrudge them whatever they need to keep their sanity. But now that we’re all out of grade school, we can revive this long-neglected little character on our keyboards.
Here’s how I start: Some sentences are syntactically exclamatory. Contrary to what your grade-school teacher may have told you, sometimes it really is wrong not to end with an exclamation mark. These sentences generally start with “what” or “how”:
What a wonderful day!
How kind of him to share his unsolicited opinion with us!
I can cite no source for this rule beyond my own sense of the language. And if someone can present a counterexample I’ll be happy to consider it. But my position for now is: Sometimes you really have to use an exclamation mark. And don’t worry: Your grade-school teacher won’t mark you down for it.