Sunset, Sunday, 11 October 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 07:41PM
BVD in Blue Ridge, Facebook, Sunset Paintings, Walt Whitman, e-mail, exclamation point, writing

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

A note on how e-mail and, perhaps even more than that, Facebook, have altered the playing field for writers. “West Hollywood,” a poem from 1982 that I posted the other day, originally had two exclamation points that were very important to the piece – but my spouse observed, and I realized she was right, that these would not register the same way now. I took them out.

Exclamation points are now anything but exceptional in everyday communication. I started adding them more and more to my own e-mails, simply from the awareness that without them most of my correspondents might think what I was saying sounded flat, cold or even angry. They’re almost useless!

We agreed Walt Whitman might have a tough time if he were writing today.

Article originally appeared on The Very Rich Hours (http://www.theveryrichhours.com/).
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