In much the same way as periods, exclamation points are placed in the wrong position most often when other punctuation marks are involved. Thankfully, they do have rules.

Exclamation Points and Quotation Marks

Below we’ll show you the most common mistakes with exclamation points and quotation marks and then show you the correct way to write it:

• Incorrect: “Help, they’re chasing after me,” she yelled!
• Correct: “Help, they’re chasing after me!” she yelled.

If you are going to use an exclamation point in this scenario, then the exclamation point should come inside the quotation marks because it does not apply to the entire sentence. But what if it did?

• Incorrect: Danny watched in horror as a woman ran by yelling “help, they’re chasing after me!”
• Correct: Danny watched in horror as a woman ran by yelling “help, they’re chasing after me”!

In this scenario, the exclamation point shows that the whole sentence was exclamatory, not just the quote, so it should be used outside of the quotation marks in this case.

Exclamation Points and Parentheses

Again, we’ll show you the incorrect examples followed by the correct examples below:

• Incorrect: The woman paid little attention to the man standing beside her (one of the men who had chased her earlier)!
• Correct: The woman paid little attention to the man standing beside her (one of the men who had chased her earlier!).

Here, we need an exclamation point inside the parentheses because it only applies to that part. The woman hadn’t noticed the man standing beside her, so she wouldn’t be exasperated or anything else that would require an exclamation point to be used. But what if the exclamation point applied to the entire sentence, not just within the parentheses?

• Incorrect: The man won a million dollars (in cash!).
• Correct: The man won a million dollars (in cash)!

Here, the parentheses simply supply additional information, but the entire sentence is exclamatory because we have put emphasis on everything. To just place an exclamation point inside the parentheses suggests that the ‘cash’ is the part you want to emphasize, when in reality it’s the entire sentence.

Exclamation Mark vs. Question Mark vs. Full Stop

The exclamation point (!) is commonly used after exclamations or interjections. A full stop (.) is mostly used at the end of a declarative sentence. While we often use a question mark (?) after an interrogative sentence in English.