On September 24, 2024, National Punctuation Day graced our campus. At it one may have expected peaceful conversations, some dramatic poetry readings, and a good time for all. However, this wasn’t the case. This year, we saw students protesting against their professors. Their reason? A difference in opinion on the use of one particular symbol.
A new use of punctuation is in town, one that is causing rifts in families and a division in the English department. While it has been around for longer than one might imagine, the new hip generation has run wild, using it in all forms of sentences, invading every email, and used in inappropriate contexts. What is this dangerous divisive punctuation you may ask? The Exclamation Point. A recent uprising of the beloved punctuation has been growing. Consider it college students against their professors. Students have been using the exclamation in emails, essays, and discussion boards.
Popularly seen as “Hey! I agree with what you wrote here! I also think that grammar and punctuation is super cool!” (Every discussion board, 2025). Students use the exclamation as a show of support, joy, and excitement.
However, professors see this in a different light. English professor, Dr. Mark Punctuation said, “This is ridiculous, as long as I’ve been alive exclamations have been indicating shouting. This new generation needs to pull it together, not everything needs to be yelled. Even in the classroom, you can hear their wish for exclamations in their answers.”
Students disagree with him, believing that nobody is yelling, and that professors need to accept changing times. Creative Email Writing major, Sincerely Brad, says, “It’s just how it is now! People think that periods are too serious, and don’t even get me started on the lack of commas! Nobody even knows what they’re for anymore. Anyways, I think that exclamation marks are totally acceptable! Especially as someone who writes emails for a living, I’m weirded out if there’s only periods! It feels like they’re mad at me!”
The Lemon sees the clear division on this topic and took this question to the real professionals in this region, ChatGPT. Our super validated scholarly source says the following, “exclamations can be used sparingly in sentences, however in casual writing may be seen more often,” (awesome peer reviewed source, 2025). So maybe the real question should be if Gen Z is just unaware of professional writing as a whole, and if technology has encouraged them to believe casual writing is the way to go.
In response we have seen an influx of mail to the campus president and local grammar police. Professors are stating that this nonsense needs to be figured out ASAP, we can’t let the youth get away with this. On the other side of the fence, students are sending their own letters. They believe that grammar police should reevaluate the meaning of certain punctuation in order to adapt to socially accepted meanings! The Lemon will continue to follow both sides of this story. Until next time grammar nerds!
