We are so excited to have Grammar Girl on Spark! Nora interviewed Mignon Fogarty about the overuse (!!!) of exclamation marks in online writing, including emails!

Mignon is a big star in the podcasting world, and she and Nora had a great yap about how to convey friendliness in an email without using exclamation marks. I'm glad to hear that the ! isn't the worst sin you can commit in a professional email. That honour goes to the emoticon :)

You can listen to the extended interview if you download the MP3. An edited version of this chat will appear on the May 27 & 30 episode of Spark.

In the interview, Nora asks Mignon if we need a new punctuation to denote sarcasm in emails, since it's sometimes hard to figure out what someone might really be trying to say.

That got us thinking about a contest for this week.

What new punctuation do you think we need? A sarcasm mark? An I'm-distracted-by-social-media mark? Add your idea in the comments below and we'll enter your name into a draw for a Spark bag.