This is OK! This isn't ;)

I like exclamation marks!!! Not to that extent, but I do. I use them sparingly, to liven up dialogue, signify volume and incredulity, and inject punch. But this, according to certain other writers, is a gross literary misjudgment on a par with ending a sentence with a comma,

"The exclamation mark is the last refuge of the scoundrel!" a writer friend railed (he'll be railing even more now I've defiled the end of his pronouncement). "It's the literary equivalent of an umbrella - pointy, almost always useless, and gets in the way."

Another journalist dubbed the mark "pointless", insisting that "all writing should convey its message without needless embellishment", while an editor spurned my upturned "i"s with a firm "we don't use screamers". I looked the word up, to discover that an exclamation mark can also be termed a gasper, startler and bang (explaining why the punctuation mark "?!" is called an interrobang).

All writers, avid readers and logophiles have at one point sighed in incredulous frustration at some scrawled misdemeanour, from misspelt signs to graffiti ardently declaring "JACK LOVE'S RACHEL". But those who insist that exclamation marks should overtake semicolons in the least-used punctuation league are misdirecting their wrath: there are far greater textual atrocities being keyed into a mobile phone right now.

The most deviant are abbreviations such as ITLTTUMOW ("I'm too lazy to think up my own words"). OMG, IMHO and the ubiquitous ROFLMAO now litter the world's inboxes, baffling anyone with the sense not to learn what they mean, and giving false hope to singles everywhere who think LOL stands for "lots of love". And, like a computer virus, they're proliferating: in the apocalyptic future, people will be able to write whole emails using these things, communicating like two fax machines and rendering words obsolete.

Nearly as heinous are emoticons, where valid symbols are robbed of their purpose and contorted into "faces", even by people over 12. "But I need to use smileys so people know when I'm joking," enthusiasts protest, unwittingly making yet another case for the exclamation mark. If you're ever tempted to clarify yourself with brackets and colons, just remember: anyone who needs their email illustrated with pictures probably isn't deserving of your prose.

Then there are the numbers and letters held hostage and trapped in sentences like "C U L8R M8". To reply with "you're not my mate any more" would only generate the question "Y?" What started as a way to save time and money at the expense of literacy is now poised to enter the lexicon, as people email one another with "R U ON 4 2NITE?"

"It doesn't matter how I spell it," careless emailers shrug nonchalantly, "as long as you know what I mean."

To which I want to yell: "Yes it does, because you're using acronyms, single letters, numbers and symbols as substitutes for words, you illiterate degenerate! You are helping to wreak havoc on the English language with every keystroke!"

In contrast, the single exclamation mark is both innocuous and useful. Shakespeare used it to express emotion and heighten drama; if he were alive today, his publisher would probably say, "Will, I'm not sure about these exclamation marks" before pressing "delete all".

Yes, the gratuitous use of exclamation marks is unnecessary and wrong. Worse, bursts of them often complete sentences full of smileys, acronyms and words with the vowels omitted, tainting the innocent single exclamation mark by association. But if writers stop using it by way of protest, we'll eventually lose one of the most colourful and lively additions to our language.

Instead, perpetrators of proper crimes against linguistics should be tried, convicted and locked inside a dusty moth-ridden library with a set of dictionaries until they start coming out with proper sentences again. After rehabilitation, an alarm should go off when they touch caps lock, while a colon and bracket pressed in quick succession should delete all the text they'd previously written.

If this action isn't enforced, in 10 years' time every email will look like this:

hi arrianne!!!!

i 4got my jckt at ur flat. if u c it dont thrw it away LOL!!!! :-))))))

thx xxxxx

If I explode with dismay while reading one on the train, and my intestines fly like bloody sausages into the faces of hapless commuters, it'll be everyone's fault.

Still, at least I'll go out with a bang(!)

Ariane Sherine