slash

I like communicating through text, but one serious weakness that frustrates me is that there is no punctuation to express moderate excitement or surprise. I will often send an email or instant message to someone with a comment that I want to be expressed with some excitement, but not the level that an exclamation mark provides.

As an example of what I am talking about, take a look at the two following sentences.

1. "That joke you sent to me is funny."
2. "That joke you sent to me is funny!"

And yet another example.

1. "Your newborn child is cute."
2. "Your newborn child is cute!"

The first option in both scenarios could be read as obligatory comments, almost said in passing. The period makes me imagine an emotionless voice is matter-of-factly rattling off the comment.

The exclamation marks make it seem like the person who wrote the comments is piling it on. It is almost like when an adult takes a fake excited tone with a child, so I sometimes see exclamation mark overuse as patronizing.

So, what is a person to do if none of the choices for punctuation seem acceptable? Create a new form of punctuation. I propose that new sentence ending punctuation is adopted that expresses excitement, but not to the level of an exclamation mark. This could be done using punctuation that is already available, like the backslash.

If the backslash is adopted for this purpose, I will no longer have to choose between the apathetic period and the patronizing exclamation mark. I don't know about you, but that makes me moderately excited\