A top benefit of working in a newsroom is the debates and conversations that take place when you bring smart, strong-willed and idiosyncratic people together, and one of the stranger conversations we’ve had of late was about the use – or overuse – of exclamation points.
You’ll find the pearls of wisdom that resulted from that debate in a project we launch Monday about Midwest etiquette. I read a viral piece in New York Magazine a while back, in which various writers addressed questions about tipping, dating and other matters, and while I found it engaging, I was struck by how some of the answers would not play in Northeast Ohio.
So, our newsroom set off on our own version of a modern etiquette guide, with questions about horn honking, grocery aisles and tipping. Unlike New York Magazine, we are not publishing it as one very long piece. We’ll post a bunch of pieces on cleveland.com next week, with a collection in The Plain Dealer next weekend.
Exclamation points were not originally a subject for the guide but grew into it organically. I had noticed that one member of the staff, who shall remain nameless, was using exclamation points on just about every other sentence of every communication sent, which struck me as odd for work-related correspondence. I privately suggested toning it down.
A few weeks later I came to find out that the suggestion had not remained private and had set off much discussion, which finally broke out into an open newsroom debate. Some argued that using exclamation points came down to a gender difference, with women finding them to be more useful tools of information conveyance than men. But that also created debate about the appropriateness of using different standards of workplace communication based on gender and how that might play into a gender discrimination lawsuit.
My description of the debate is far more tame than the actual debate. Leila Atassi, a former columnist and current editor, participated, which guaranteed it was pretty wild and spirited. (You’ll understand this if you’re a regular listener to our weekday Today in Ohio podcast discussion of the news, which features Leila.)
As the debate raged, a flash bulb went off for Content Director Laura Johnston, also a podcast regular, who quickly wrote advice about exclamation points for the etiquette guide. I suspect her piece will not end the debate. Rather, it is likely to provoke more in the homes and workplaces of anyone who reads it.
The guide has been in the works for weeks, shepherded by Jane Morice, a social media specialist, and when I had the chance to read it in its entirety, I was impressed by the breadth of it and by how much room there is for disagreement. Some of the advice is genteel. Some, not so much. The voices of our staff members shine through it.
The contributions of two people stood out for me. Yadi Rodriguez, who produces much of our “best of” content, writes warmly with terrific advice about when you should disclose having COVID or whether it’s OK to remove your shoes in public, among other things.
And Lucas Daprile stopped me in my tracks with hilarious answers to questions about playing loud music at the beach, whether you can yell at the owners of misbehaving dogs and how many modifications to a coffee order is too many.
Lucas’ pieces are so novel that we’re thinking now of having him write a regular advice column. Our online readers love advice columns like Ask Amy and Ask Annie, which we get from syndicates. I like the idea of having a home-grown version that breaks the mold of these columns, and I had no idea that Lucas could be so funny and inventive. His advice would most certainly not be for everybody, but I do think part of our audience would enjoy it.
As for the etiquette guide, I am certain you will agree with parts and disagree with others. I’m equally certain many of you will share your points of view with me, and I welcome them. That’s the purpose of such a guide. We want to provoke conversation.
I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com.
Thanks for reading.
