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Comment by kyrofa | Hacker News Reader

It seems overly simplistic to boil this down to sexism. You're really going to tell me that I'm sexist because I think emailing a paying customer with multiple sentences ending in multiple exclamation marks comes off as unprofessional? I should be able to have an opinion about messaging and tone without involving that person's gender.

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Taking it beyond the sexism angle, exclamation points are like the pumped up macho guy in a mafia movie, yelling and threatening with puffed up gestures and poses. But he has very limited power. The real authority lies with the withered 80 year old godfather; he doesn't even need to speak. An unchanging facial expression, a small, almost imperceptible upward head nod with a sideways glance and the henchmen know exactly who to put the hit on.

Not trying to comment on sexism but this sticks out to me:

> I think emailing a paying customer with multiple sentences ending in multiple exclamation marks comes off as unprofessional

Why?

Because we're providing a service. We're not buddies. We're not texting our bff. I don't like to see professional emails using "lol" either.

Not the OP, but seems like the typical used-car sales pitch, where they yell at you to pay attention. If what they had was so great, they wouldn't have to yell. But since these are used cars, not materially different from other used cars, they try to differentiate themselves by volume instead of value.

I think Apple could put out an 15 second ad, with just a black background, where in the first second a white Apple logo fades in. And then a several seconds later, a date fades in below the logo. Maybe a soft ocean sound in the background. And people would be eagerly awaiting whatever mystery launch is happening. (Or maybe Apple (or someone else) already has run an ad like this?)

Playing on that theme some more, exclamation points seem like a fake signal of importance. As in, I didn't bother to take the time to make my message interesting or useful, so I'll add this punctuation at the end to try to trick you into believing it is worthy of your time. But of course you didn't trick them, they just now start to dismiss you.

Also, I could see similarities between exclamation use and swearing. Some people swear all the time, so it means essentially nothing. "I like fucking butter on my toast." So they don't have that option to escalate their language in the future. Whereas a person whose previous last use of the f-word was 20 years when they lost their leg in a traffic accident, now says "We need to get this fucking situation sorted out by Friday" gets some extra gravitas.

Because it is. You are not communicating very well if you need to use multiple exclamation points. "...after a word group or sentence in order to emphasize a point or to express strong emotion or surprise" Just how many points are you trying to emphasize? Unless it is an ad, multiple exclamation points look awkward and amateurish.

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