The clever exclamation mark....

I have a confession.  I have an addiction. Yes!  It’s true.  I tried to hide it from you guys but as it turns out…. It’s rather public already.  So to defeat this obsession and to try to make a go of my life I’m going to try some self-examination and therapy (as you recall, I am ALMOST a doctor…. Just missing the 8 years of education and stuff…Lame!!!!)   Publically on my blog.  Here goes:

I am an abuser of the exclamation mark.  (see above paragraph) Yes.  I love them.  I use them in all kinds of situations.  To over stress the obvious.  To show extreme happiness.  To extreme sadness.  To display my anger at something or someone.  These are often accompanied by a smiley face or a frowny face.  Or my personal favorite… angry face:  >:O! Yes.  I also abuse emoticons.  (Man I have problems). 

I use exclamation points for emails, texts, quirky abbreviations, posts, tweets, air quotes… you name it… I use ‘em.  If we were in the dark ages when typewriters were the only available writing tool, I would have worn out that button… then the number one would be an innocent bystander to the undeserved violent end of said exclamation point.  Oh. The humanity!!!!!

And worse, most of the time, one isn’t enough.  I have to add two, three or fifty-seven.  Sometimes the poor question mark is thrown into the mix.  Yet another inadvertent victim of the abuse.  Apparently I hurt everything around me!  See?!? I just did it again.

I wonder if there is a twelve step program to help with this?  But who would I make amends to? The number 1? The question mark? And what of the ampersand?  Does it need an apology?  I mean, I rarely use it.  And sometimes I use it incorrectly.  Just like all the other punctuation marks. 

Don’t even get me started on the … .  This is used to insinuate a pause in my sentence.  For example:  Uh, Yea……. I did take upper level English in college!…..duh!?!? See? See what I did there…. Both obsessions in one.

For those keeping score:  16 exclamation points.  11 question marks. 42 mostly unnecessary periods.  One angry face. >:O  woops, make that two. 

Hello. My name is Missy, and I have punctuation problems. And sadly, I have hypocritically been guilty of lol-ing.