I used to think there were two sorts of people in the world: those who used exclamation marks in their work emails and those who did not.
I also thought that frequent users of what Americans insist on calling exclamation “points” were less serious, less worldly and less professional.
As a result, I shunned the things, especially if writing to someone important or anyone with the power to shape my future, as in a boss. I never felt as strongly as Terry Pratchett, whose novels have characters saying the use of multiple exclamation marks is a sure sign of an “insane” or “diseased” mind. But I appreciated the sentiment.
Somewhere along the line, though, possibly around the time I sent my first emoji, I caved. “Hello!” I started writing to colleagues. “That’s fantastic news!” “Thanks!”
RM Block
I blame this on the informality that social media ushered in and the pandemic, which seemed to intensify said informality. But I now wonder if I did it for another, more dubious reason. Was it because I sensed that a growing number of men at work – colleagues, contacts, bosses – had started to do the same thing?
This thought occurred last week when I came across some research from the US confirming what I had always dimly suspected about exclamation marks.
First, women use them a lot more than men – nearly three times as much, by some counts. Second, women do this because they worry they will seem too cold and unfriendly if they don’t.
Third, they then spend even more time worrying about whether this makes them seem incompetent or inferior. This is because women are, in the words of the research paper, “more sensitive to potential downstream impression formation implications of using exclamation points”.
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Leaving aside the lamentable nature of this writing, it seems possible I felt free to let loose with exclamation marks once I thought more men were doing it. Either way, the big news from the research is that, regardless of whether you are male or female, you can probably relax.
Littering work emails with this problematic piece of punctuation does raise the risk of being judged less adept at analytical thinking and less powerful, which doubtless matters if you work for a Wall Street bank or a London law firm. But crucially, the research shows you will not be deemed less competent.
Also, you will seem more warm and likable, and these findings apply to everyone, regardless of gender, so women exclaimers need not worry about being judged more harshly than any male counterpart. Likewise, men harbouring urges to be more exclamative should feel free to submit.
Caveats are needed. Students and junior employees should tread carefully, especially in new jobs. Also, the paper is based on five studies conducted in the US, where enthusiasm for exclamation points can be more unbounded.
Exhibit one: study co-author Cheryl Wakslak, associate professor of management at the University of Southern California and an inveterate exclamation point user. She finds her research findings liberating.
“I actually found it fairly freeing because as a whole we find that exclamation point usage is very positive,” she told me. “It was my natural style anyway. Now I’m all in!”
Wakslak’s students may be even more grateful. She began the research not long after witnessing a striking gender divide in one of her classes during a discussion on the difficulty of getting the tone right in formal communication.
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All the young women in the classroom immediately said, “Oh, my God! I think about this all the time!” and “Thank you for saying that out loud. I thought it was just me!” Some revealed they worried so much they sent their emails to their mothers to check they were OK before pressing send.
Meanwhile, all the young men in the room looked on blankly. “They had no idea what any of the women were talking about,” said Wakslak. I was sorry to hear this story, though not surprised.
When I told a female acquaintance about Wakslak’s research this week, she immediately said she had been worrying about whether a work email she had just sent an older male colleague should have contained an exclamation mark. Or not.
I don’t suppose a single study will be enough to stop women spending so much time worrying about punctuation choices. But hopefully it will help. After all, we now have evidence that all that fretting is in fact quite pointless!
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
