The Surprising Thing That Happens When You Give Up Exclamation Points For a Day

I make my living as a writer, but I'll admit: I prefer emoji and GIFs over words most of the time. Somehow, despite years of academic literary training, I often communicate better with short clips of Mean Girls and small pizza icons.

Working at a media company like POPSUGAR doesn't help with my digital communication dilemma, either . . . often, our work email chains are filled with GIF responses. I thrive in an environment of communicative freedom, but has it made me too likely to add "!!!!!!!" to the end of every email I send? When I pondered my frequent use of "sentence enhancers," I began to worry about something even more pressing: if I were to stop typing the way that I do now, would people like me less? I had to find out.

I decided to spend one day communicating without exclamation points, emoji, or GIFs; none of my written communication (whether personal or for work) would be emotionally enhanced.

This was no easy feat for me. I had to leave sticky notes on my phone, computer monitor, and laptop screen reminding me not to slip up, and I still caught myself including exclamations. Every time I sent an email filled with periods, I felt like a jerk. When I texted my boyfriend to congratulate him on something, I was afraid I was slighting him with my lack of emotional emphasis. Throughout the day I became nervous every time I got a text or email notification, because I knew it meant I'd have to send what I imagined was a lackluster reply.

By the time the day ended, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. It was over! I had done it. "If I came off as rude, underenthusiastic, or bored during any of our conversations today, please know that not adding exclamatory additions to my correspondences was very difficult. I think you're all wonderful and am extremely excited about pretty much anything," I said in an explanatory, GIF-filled email to my co-workers after work. I was sure that they'd noticed my change in communication style and likely thought me rude.

I was so wrong. "I didn't even realize it," one colleague told me after I sent the email. Only one person noticed, but she simply thought that I may have been stressed. I'd spent all day fretting about the impression I was making on my co-workers, but they frankly didn't even care. The importance of my conversational additions was, apparently, all in my head.

In giving up exclamations, emoji, and GIFs, I was challenged to better express myself through words. Instead of saying my usual "Yay!" in a congratulatory email to my team, I elaborated: "So excited about this — congrats, everybody. What a wonderful month." I also found myself asking more questions of my peers, stimulating conversation so that they didn't think me disinterested. Overall, I was a much more sincere and effective communicator when I had to ditch my emotional crutches.

Since completing this personal challenge, I've given more consideration to each exclamation point and cop-out emoji response. While it's great that technology allows us to communicate with smiley poops (because sometimes it just needs to be done), it can make us lazy, too.

I want to be a genuine conversationalist who cares about my interactions with others, and that means finding the words to express my joy, sorrow, or hilarity — not simply picking a picture from a gallery or adding excited punctuation points behind a generic statement. I've started investing more time, effort, and emotion into my discussions with others, because I hope that they're invested in their talks with me.