I use exclamation points so frequently I even annoy myself. I’ve been concentrating on not using them, but they seem to ! sneak into my ! text when I’m not ! looking!

Seriously – thanks for the post. It helps to hear it from someone else. I’d hate to correct a problem that no one else thought was a problem. 😉

People do exclaim, and they do emphasise; and I might use CAPS for something like a loud speaker announcement or an urgent, screamed warning.

Readers should not always have to decide what these emphases might be for themselves, no matter how expert the writing. Clarity sometimes works.

Rather than a rant like this (sure, it gets us going), a better approach would be to describe where they can be useful and in what context.

BTW, as well as Hunger Games, take another read of Harry Potter. Doesn't bother these authors or their editors and publishers it seems. Depends on whether you want to sell hundreds of millions of books I guess.

I hate bold other than chapter headings. the same thing goes for ellipses and emdash overuse.

As an editor, I find a lot of good uses for these punctuations, but as with anything in life, extreme is bad. I'll red line them all.

I find five or six POV separations in one chapter irritating. These should be limited to three at most. Two is better. The symbols used for these POV shifts can vary in the advent of e-publishing the standard two line spacing is not visible. These symbols should in my mind be limited to four of five asterisks at most.

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What about the use of a bunch of asterisks across the page to separate thoughts or transitions from one character to another? They are like a page breaks or internal chapters. I've seen them used to show simultaneous events, or opposing movements of the protagonist vs antagonist.

Your advice on inner dialogue:
"And just so you know, CMS now says it's NOT correct to use italics for thoughts, but it's a subjective style decision and many editors still allow it."

If not italics, what would be the standard?

I need to put forth extra effort with submissions containing these irritants, so they are more likely to be summarily deleted — especially if I am near a deadline.