Do you agree?

I assure you, that they were needed. Heathcliff's famous soliloquy after Catherine's death would have been very different without the use of exclamation points.

Nonsense, exclamation marks are excellent for shouted dialogue.

It's a commonplace practice that can help avoid confusion when reading.

Would people get confused if I were to italicize the protagonist's thoughts to himself, but keep thoughts to the reader in regular font? For example:

(Italics) Did that girl wink at me? It was just a second before someone walked between us, but I swear I could see a eye move for an instant.

(Then normal font) Winking is usually a sarcastic or comical gesture, I wouldn't normally be reading into it too much, but she had been trying to be subtle about staring at me all night.

These are just an example, but a fair portion of the story would be the protagonist not only thinking to himself about the social situations he finds himself in, but then also justifying/explaining his actions and responses.

Writing thoughts is hard. It's easier, and better to read I think personally, to write actions, and through the actions we can assume the thoughts. Thomas Mann is the master at this. Instead of writing inner thoughts, he has his characters blush, sweat and dry heave when they are winked at

Rather pleb but convenient

I think they crucial for epistolary formats such as letters and diaries.

We need to reinstate Scriptio continua and eliminate all punctuation and lowercase letters, with the exception of some usage of word-breakers. That way people will stop focusing on stupid punctuation usage, and the styles of writing that go along with it, as a paradigm for written substance. People should instead rely only on their words and their usage of them to indicate the points those punctuation-marks and their interpretations cover, by replacing it with a model of natural oral speech.

It may seem like I'm being ironically-archaic, but I'm dead-serious. Punctuation is like lined-paper -- helpful if you're new to writing and is more pleasurable with writing at first, but the more and more you write you notice it gets in your way and restricts you too often.

Minimalist credos bore me to tears. Take your fucking "lean, muscular dicks"--I mean "prose" and go play. I'd rather read works by authors who use any words or punctuation or description they want to. Are we reading for fucking plot now?

t. purple author whose only claim to fame was being born rich and white in a time when that was favorable

t b q h

i think it's halfway between laughing at your own joke & trying to explain it

either way it's weak

i like the vagueness of not using exclamation points.

>I read shitty books

Excellent pseud test. You won't find one who isn't afraid of them!

kek

double kek

t. never read any drama or Herman Melville

chill out cormac

What's wrong with laughing at my own jokes? I'm the funniest person I know!

>They didn't need them. That's the point.

You think you know more than some of the greatest writers to ever live?

Call and bus and let it meet your face.

They are crucial in dialogue when its appropriate. But I can't think of when it'd ever be necessary outside of quotation marks, with the exclusion of poetry...

VNDERRATEDPOST

>...
Time to kill yourself you pathetic waste of life.

>laughing at your own joke is bad
archive.org/stream/lastessayselia01lambgoog#page/n228/mode/2up

They didn't need to use periods instead. That's another another point.

I don't think so. the books I've read where the author doesn't use quotation marks for dialogue confuses the shit out of me.

for those who don't want to open the link:

>Charles Lamb. Last Essays of Elia. "Popular Fallacies"

>III. That a man must not laugh at his own jest.

>The severest exaction surely ever invented upon the self-denial of poor human nature! This is to expect a gentleman to give a treat without partaking of it; to sit esurient at his own table, and commend the flavour of his venison upon the absurd strength of his never touching it himself. On the contrary, we love to see a wag taste his own joke to his party; to watch a quirk or a merry conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds before the tongue is delivered of it. If it be good, fresh, and racy—begotten of the occasion; if he that utters it never thought it before, he is naturally the first to be tickled with it, and any suppression of such complacence we hold to be churlish and insulting. What does it seem to imply but that your company is weak or foolish enough to be moved by an image or a fancy, that shall stir you not at all, or but faintly? This is exactly the humour of the fine gentleman in Mandeville, who, while he dazzles his guests with the display of some costly toy, affects himself to "see nothing considerable in it."

Fitzgerald was right, though, that exclamation marks are like laughing at your own joke. They belong to a time when men enjoyed what they wrote.

Fitzgerald was the furthest thing from a minimalist

You've obviously never read any book written before 1900. "The furthest thing." Jesus Christ, sit down.

>Fitzgerald
>Hemingway
>Joyce

Why are we letting all these Micks and Taigs dictate the rules of writing? None of them are anything special.

It's appropriate when you feel it is and when it adds to the writing. I use exclamation points in emails, especially to women. I started doing it because I noticed how consistently many women will use exclamation points in common conversation. Write for your audience and don't keep yourself strapped down with rules that stop you from getting your point across.

I dont agree

>implying there are any definitive rules for writing

who cares what he had to say tb h

Completely agree.

If anyone thinks differently, read Hardy (his verse I mean). His excessive use of exclamation points drives me up the fucking wall.

t. William Ulsterman

>When is it appropriate to use them?

When a character is screaming some shit.

I agree you shouldn't use them to underline "genius" revelations done by the narrator tho.