Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Passive-Aggressive Punctuation

What's with all the crazy punctuating these days? It's one thing to go a little overboard with your question marks and/or exclamation points when telling a story or relating an anecdote, it's quite another to starting flinging them around AT people.

When are you going to ________?????????

Why did you ______?????????

You need to ______!!!!!!!!

Or my very favorite, throwing in the fake "we" as in We need to _______!!!!!!!!! when the author has no intention of actually helping.

I'm sensing a little hostility.

Why not just be direct - "Hey stupid, when are you doing to get your sh#t together?

or

Why are you you such a screw up?

or

Get off you a$$ and do what I want you to do right now!!!

Of course, what would be even better if people could be nice AND direct.

Hey, do you think you could ______?

I was wondering if we'd ever tried ______?

You get the idea.

The bottom line is I am over the runaway punctuation and the next time someone starts throwing exclamation points at me I'm going to throw them back.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry!!! I'll try to do better!!!!!!! Forgive me??????

Trix in the Stix said...

OK... I can't think of anything clever to say... I just wanted to do this... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm more of a dot girl...

KB said...

LOL. You guys crack me up. :) Trust me, I did not have either one of you in mind when I wrote that rant.

Anonymous said...

I'm a recovering passive-aggressive punctuator.

I'm more of a dot girl too... I can't seem to break myself of that habit...

Dainty Musings said...

We've got a client at work who adds several ??? always.

The extra marks instantly take a mundane question straight to potential diaster level without any need to say anything else.

Makes him look like a Chicken Little, I think.