Questions and Exclamations

Questions and Exclamations. 

1,  The exclamation mark.  It is now used for anything positive or nice, or as an indication that the sentence is meant as positive or nice, leading to whole paragraphs where each sentence ends with one, often diminishing the effect.  As well as for factitious emphasis! 

2. The question mark.  Certain uses of them, in what are not, grammatically speaking, questions, have always been allowed; as in 'You don't approve?'.  But they are now used in declarative sentences as a way of avoiding the implications of the declarative form, of not asserting the content of the sentence but merely suggesting it.  And we already have devices for that. We can write, 'I suggest ...', 'Perhaps ...', or 'Maybe ..', 'I'm tempted to say ... '; 'I suppose ...'.  I don't know what to think of sentences like 'Maybe we should outlaw it?'.  As far as I can see, the sentence should just be: 'Maybe we should outlaw it'.  

Perfect real world example, from a chatroom: 

I see trump as unqualified to run because of his words and actions.

But millions of others see it differently.

I think we must walk on the safe side on this issue?

I know that these uses of the exclamation mark and the question mark can be defended.  The question mark in the above example has an air of asking the reader for his or her opinion, or at least to think about it; it's like the New Zealander who ends every sentence with 'Eh?' or the Ned who says at the end of many sentences 'Do you know what I mean?'.  The sentence doesn't just announce the writer's train of thought as my proposed replacement does.  The above use of the exclamation mark is harder to defend; but wanting to come off as friendly and supportive is perhaps not a bad thing.  The bottom line however is that the more that bug spreads, the more the present particular effect of the exclamation mark will be lost.

The dystopian horror would be a language in which one would come off as cold and unfriendly for lacking exclamation marks, and worse, which comes to lack a recognizably declarative mood, ie, in which it is impossible to say P, but at most 'Maybe P', or 'P?'.  I take a little solace from that outcome's being impossible. 

In both cases, the effect can be accomplished the old-fashioned way, with words. Or maybe in a new fangled way, with icons.  I do like me some simple icons: ;)  :) -- for those, there is no equivalent.  And I do use, and approve of the practice theoretically, of sentence fragments.  For example the first paragraph above ends with "As well as for factitious emphasis!". It's fine, so long as the preceding full-stop (period) can be changed mentally to a comma or a semi-colon.