One of the secrets to figuring out our times is that exclamation mark on your keypad. You see, before the 1970s, it usually wasn’t there. I checked with Underwood and Smith Corona, and they didn’t have any satisfying explanation. So let me submit my own for your consideration.
For most of the history of writing, punctuation was to clarify, not glorify, the narrative. Maintaining a civilization was a serious, somber business, and writing reflected that reality. But by the 19th and 20th centuries, the serious was gradually being overtaken by the romantic. The classicism of Bach and Mozart was now rivaled by the romanticism of Beethoven and Brahms, painters like Michelangelo and Giotto by the flourishes of Monet and Picasso.
At the same time, here in America, many of the old Victorian norms of behavior gave way to the post-war ’20s and eventually the ’60s, in which rules were more to be bent and broken than heralded and honored. Bing Crosby and Perry Como gave way to Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Virgin brides gave way to the morning-after pills. In turn, entertainment morphed into an age where solo singing is incidental to collective showmanship, film dialog is incidental to flaming fireballs. Everything bigger, badder, more bodacious.
By now, virtually everything is an exclamation mark!
Authors, actors and anchors … celebrities, coaches and Congress … science, studios and salespeople all pitching and puffing 24/7 with all the exclamatory dazzle they can muster. Nothing is average; everything is spectacular; nothing comes in second; everything is the first-est and the best-est.
Living in an exclamatory culture is, well, sometimes exhausting more than it is exhilarating. Or is there a difference anymore? All I know is every day I dare step outside my front door, the whole world is right in my face.
Which is why, I admit, I often step back inside and lock the door. And you?
— Jack Spatafora, Park Ridge
