Martha shares what F. Scott Fitzgerald and Elmore Leonard had to say about exclamation marks. Short version: Neither is a fan. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Author Thoughts on Exclamation Marks”
Grant, we were talking earlier about exclamation marks, and I guess part of the reason I’m self-conscious about using them is that so many writers have advised against them.
Get a load of these.
Elmore Leonard said of exclamation marks, you are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
And F. Scott Fitzgerald said, cut out all those exclamation marks.
An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.
I so agree with that.
But I think there’s a place for exclamation marks in, say, emails or handwritten notes.
But in literature, they should be very scarce.
Okay.
We can agree on that.
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