How I would change the written English language

One downside of putting spoken language to print is that inevitably the same emotion cannot be adequately expressed. For the most part, I think that a writer can do a pretty good job in English. But there is one area that the English language struggles and may very well be in need of a new symbol: emotional emphasis. A lot of times, putting certain sentences to print with a mere period punctuation makes the sentence look as if a robot is saying it. This is undesirable, especially when the subject matter is emotional.

So how most people compensate for this is by using an exclamation point. The exclamation point definitely has an emotional emphasis, but too often it is used with excitement, rather than just to stress heartfelt emotion. Imagine the context of me writing a letter to my professor. The words of appreciation with a period make it sound not very grateful, or robotic, or not very genuine. "Thank you for writing the letter for me." But because the whole tone of my email is serious and professional an exclamation point is out of place: "Thank you for writing the letter for me!" Keep in mind that I don't want to communicate excitement here, I just want to let her know that I am really grateful. If I did send her the exclamated sentence, she might be like, "Whoa buddy, you're getting a little bit excited there."

Another example is in the most recent Ensign magazine. Elder Quentin L. Cook, referring to women, wants to really express how wonderful he believes women are. But the editors of the Ensign clearly struggled with the same idea. Here is the text.

I echo that sentiment today. Our LDS women are incredible!

By reading the text of this excerpt, it would appear as if Elder Cook was raising his voice, or at the very least has an excited tone. But the video shows quite the opposite; the tone is very level, the exclamation is merely being to infuse emotion into his words.



So there's the dilemma. You want to sound emotional, but not overly excited. To solve this problem, we should come up with another symbol to distinguish the two cases. The exclamation point should be used in contexts of high excitement, like when you are at a basketball game or rock concert, while another symbol should be used for emotional emphasis. There are quite a few symbols available on the keyboard that we don't commonly use in English print, but the checkmark symbol √ seems most appropriate. The checkmark is simple, and it gives the reader the impression that you are giving emphasis to this sentence. And that is usually the context of when the exclamation point is inadequate. "It's nice to meet you.√" I'm really happy to meet you, I'm not bored and I'm not a robot, but I'm also not one of those overly excited types either.

There may be times when the exclamation points can be combined with checkmarks. For instance, what if you were trying to stress emotional emphasis and really excited at the same time. You could couple the checkmark quite easily with other punctuation; the checkmark will just come last. "I love you!√" This is like combining question marks with exclamation points, completely acceptable. For example, "Are you serious??!" But most often, the checkmark symbol will stand alone, I imagine.

The exclamation point is currently used to stress emphasis. However, because the exclamation point is also used for excitement, this leads to a confusing conundrum. That is why introduction of the new emphasis symbol, the checkmark, is so vital. I really think we should adopt this system.√