I’m doing the Comment Challenge over at motherreader.com and Lee Wind’s blogs this month, which has really been a great kickstarter for me and for this site. But it’s also been a bit overwhelming. The idea is to leave five comments a day on other kidlit blogs out there, which is a great and lofty goal. But to get to know a new blog I like to read lots of posts and that takes time, which means I’m not updating my own blog. And it means I’m not doing what I should really be doing, which is Writing for Love and Insulation. (On the brighter side, it does mean I’m spending less time on facebook, which is one of my new year’s resolutions.)
To Feed the Beast, I thought I’d do a quick post on another resolution, so here’s a brief history of Exclamation Points and Me.
When I was at N.C. State, one of my journalism professors had an expression: “Don’t start with a quote unless the pope says ‘*$^#.'” (Rhymes with spit.) The idea was that beginning a news story with a quote was a copout, and you should reserve that move for … well, I explained that already. Another thing you seldom use in journalism is the exclamation point. So I added that jubilant piece of punctuation to the pope mantra: “Never use an exclamation point unless the pope says ‘*#&@!”
