If you can get past Urban Dictionary entries that contain disgusting sexual disorders and the Maine culinary inequalities of Bangor, Maine, bangorrhea is defined as the excessive use of exclamation marks in a vain attempt to make your writing more exciting. All copy editors must clean up bangorrhea at some point in their careers… and we complain about it.
An alternative name for the exclamation mark is where the bang portion of bangorrhea is derived from. This word has been used in typesetting manuals since at least the 1950s. Many believe it is a derivative of comic books where the BANG! A speech bubble with an exclamation mark in it was used to indicate a firing gun. It found new life in computer programming where it is now! It is used as a logical operator and the name “bang” helps to save a lot more syllables than “exclamation point.”
Bangorrhea!
This type of bang is recognizable from the interrobang the fringe, but still possible combination of a question and exclamation mark whose invention is attributed to Martin K. Speckter, an adman.
And as you might have guessed, rhea is a word part of diarrhea. It’s a co-opted from diarrhea. It comes from Latin “to flow” and can be a fun ending to spur-of-the-moment neologisms.
Bangorrhea has only recently showed up in search engine searches, as we could not find any instances prior to 2011. This is actually quite impressive. It’s possible that the word is gaining acceptance and use. I have seen it in two print books.
It is essential to give this irritating writing habit a concise name. It is something welcome in our vocabulary… seriously!!!