When Jon LaMantia, a Long Island-based business reporter, was in journalism school, his professor drilled one rule into his students: you get two exclamation points a year and no more.

“So if you use them in January,” LaMantia recalls being told, “you better hope there’s nothing to exclaim for the rest of the year.”

The rule stuck. LaMantia still thinks about that rigid quota today. “I use exclamation points all the time in texts and emails. If you don’t, the message sounds more stern,” he says. “But I can’t remember the last time I used one in a business article.”

Strong feelings about the exclamation point aren’t uncommon. People tend to either love it or loathe it; lean on it constantly, or avoid it religiously.

“Personally, I use multiple, but at work I’ll only use one,” says a wom

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