Cut the Shout from Your Writing

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke…” F. Scott Fitzgerald

Let your words and sentences make the point

Once a writer in a crítique group explained that his university professor kept a high grammar standard. Each of his students was allowed one exclamation mark per ten thousand words. Not sure if he inforced that as he graded short stories. Nor if it cut deeply into a college student’s grade. I do know different novel genres and editors hold other opinions on this topic. So, I want other grammar teachers and editors to chime in.

[image error]Photo by Melany Rochester on Unsplash
A Call for Grammar Teachers & Editors

What style guide you choose to guide the use of exclamation marks?
What advice or guidelines have helped you as a writer?
How do you limit the number of exclamation marks?
Do you insist an exclamation mark be used in every shouted sentence of dialogue?
What indicates the excessive or overuse?
What tips do you share with your students or writing clients?

Social Media Lacks Readable Grammar
New Authors & New Books Await in 2019

Yes or no? I’m always rewriting my blog posts to update or correct my grammar, clarity, and style. Yet even today as I read over one of my infrequent travel posts I corrected a half dozen of mistakes. Of course, I found I could rewrite several sentences to better depict the impressions I had while touring the north of France two years ago. Read my travel post at True Wealth in France’s Land and Forests.

New Authors & New Books Await in 2019

My goal in writing this blog goes beyond to attract readers for my Dog Leader Mystery series. My goal stands to become a better writer every day. A New Year’s resolution will not be needed for me to continue moving on that path. The mountain top may be reached. I may feel at times my prose pleases myself or readers. Or I find that it meets a higher standard in fiction or in nonfiction than achieved before. Yet all writers remain novices at a craft in which Hemingway deemed as ever expanding. Simply due to the invention of writers has been a long wave since Homer of fresh style, new takes on lyricism, diction, and power.