A new study has found that women use exclamation points more often in e-mails, text messages and group chats.Illustration by Getty Images
If you have been walking the punctuational fine line with your exclamation points – teetering between “I’m-mad-at-you” on the one hand and “I’m-crazy” on the other – join the club. I mean, join the club!
Tone matters when we communicate. As more of our communication takes place in the digital space, tonal ambiguity can cause IRL anxiety. Exclamation points have become the go-to indication of a light, breezy tone.
Say you make a suggestion. Then receive an “okay” text in reply. The exclamation point, or lack thereof, could imply meaning beyond the word.
“Okay.” Oh no, what have I done?
“Okay!” Phew. We’re good!
“Okay!!!” Oh no, what have I done?
You’ve probably thought about this as you compose life’s many messages. But you’re more likely to think about this if you’re female.
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Yes, like so many other realities of this cruel, gendered world, new scientific literature reports that the use of the exclamation mark is more of an issue for women. Just add this to the already weighty plight of contemporary female existence!
For “Nice to meet you.(!) Gendered norms in punctuation usage,” researchers in the U.S. conducted five studies, finding that women use exclamation points more often in e-mails, text messages and group chats.
Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, the study also found that women “are more sensitive to potential downstream impression formation implications of using exclamation points.”
In English? We care what you think! We fret over if and how to use exclamation points, and worry what our usage says about us to others.
The findings also shed light on the “unexpected burdens” this can create.
Consider this case study, a text message I may have sent this week: “At least I don’t have to worry about paying tax on that private jet purchase!”
The exclamation mark was essential. It said: I’m joking! Making wisecracks about the federal budget and how I am in no way affected by this ludicrous tax adjustment! (Which, yes, I understand was not meant to appease the billionaire class, but to shed a program that cost more to administrate than it brought in.)
If I were a man, perhaps I would have texted: “At least I don’t have to worry about paying tax on that private plane purchase.” Which might have been funnier. (And somewhat more likely, given my increased earning power as a man.)
Then again, had I texted: “At least I don’t have to worry about paying tax on that private plane purchase!!!!” I may have sounded somewhat crazed.
In the end, I didn’t even send the text! Delete!
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The point? I actually thought about this. I wasted I don’t know how many precious seconds (minutes?) on this when I could have been doing something actually useful, such as, perhaps, figuring out how the budget actually applies to my life rather than considering a joke about how it doesn’t.
Multiply this by the number of messages written in a day – and man, that’s a lot of wasted time. Yes, period.
The study notes that linguists have posited that exclamation marks have evolved in our digital world – from the original intent of signalling amplified emotions in print, to becoming “a marker of sincerity.” You still rarely see an exclamation point used sincerely in, say, a news article. But our e-mails and texts are full of them.
This research looked specifically at gendered use. It found when a sender uses exclamation points, the recipient is more likely to think the writer is female. Women are more likely to think a message with exclamation points is the norm; it’s the opposite for men. There are positive and negative implications in terms of the impression they can form, the study explains: Yes, they create a feeling of warmth, but also a decreased sense of competence and analytical thinking.
There is also this heavy-sigh finding: “Women tend to spend valuable mental resources worrying about their punctuation choices.”
So we’re trying to appear kind and warm, without looking too unserious, and agonizing about how we’re being perceived and whether we should dial it back on the exclamation points or whether we’ll seem cold or bossy if we don’t decide to exclaim. And men? They’re just cruising through the work day, with a statistical probability of earning more than those of us who are angsting over our exclamation points – while we are already busy angsting over the kids’ doctors’ appointments and getting the dog groomed and signing field-trip forms and what on earth is left in the fridge that will work for dinner? The mental load is real – and now it includes punctuation.
Are we being rude? Over-enthusiastic? Will this exclamation point, or lack thereof, affect this friendship? Or my employment?
It’s exhausting, all of this worrying. Full stop.