Not another work e-mail with exclamation marks!

It turns out there is less to worry about than you might think.

- Pilita Clark

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!”

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.