Exclamation marks! I have of late been brooding on them! Every Sunday, The New York Times is full of them! For example, the advertisement for Philip Barry’s Holiday at Circle in the Square:

Youthful, vigorous, good-looking. Tony Goldwyn is funny and elegant. The beautiful Laura Linney is his equal!
—Vincent Canby,
The New York Times

The beautiful Laura Linney didn’t rate an exclamation mark in Canby’s review. It’s actually very difficult to sneak an exclamation mark into the columns of the Times. As press agents will testify, the paper is merciless in defending its critical integrity against the hucksters of Broadway: you’re not allowed, say, to quote Canby’s more genial comments from WQXR or WQEW, the Times radio stations, and bill them as the views of “Canby of the Times.” Yet they’re happy to indulge advertising copy which riddles his shafts with exclamation marks. Perhaps they feel the practice is so desperate as to be self-evident. Perhaps they amuse themselves by playing spot-the-least-deservedly-exclamation-peppered-quote: “The choreography is derivative and the lyrics serviceable! Together they make for an insipid evening!” But, in truth, hardly any of the copy merits exclamation marks. It’s sham excitement, which, in its way, is the defining condition of our drama. Driving home from the theater the other night, I caught some talk-radio Love Doc discussing the phenomenon of the phantom ejaculation. That’s where (if I understand correctly) the man thinks he has reached the point of climax, and, while