Uffizi director Schmidt prohibits ellipsis, bold and capital letters

Banned double, not to mention triple, exclamation point. If it were possible, it would be better to forget about it altogether. And then, no sloppiness, watch out for boldface, no more capital letters that sound like a social network boor. Even the three dots, better to keep them for private chats. One would say: severe, but fair. Thus the director of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Eike Schmidt, forwarded a circular to the employees of the museum complex in which he provides instructions «for a correct and homogeneous drafting of the texts in the communications to be sent by e-mail from the institutional personal address of electronic mail from the MiC or from the mailboxes of the individual departments of the Uffizi Galleries”.

A sort of code of conduct to standardize and, why not, refine all internal and above all external communications. «It is necessary to always avoid, where possible, the exclamation point, while for both the question mark and the exclamation point it is necessary to type it only once at the end of the sentence without ever repeating it». Concerned about good Italian and spelling, he asks to use boldface “sparingly” and to avoid words in all capital letters. Even the ellipsis should be avoided “since the meaning of the individual paragraphs of the texts of work emails must be clear, explicit and never allusive”.

What the three dots can be used for at work – which, as Treccani says, are used to signal that the discussion is suspended, generally out of embarrassment, hesitation or allusiveness – in fact it is not clear. Schmidt gives precise indications: “Within a text it is necessary to avoid, where possible, the use of bold characters, while the underlining of words, salient sentences or parts of them is still permitted”. And then: «You must also avoid writing sentences in capital letters. The use of capital letters must be limited to the indication of proper names of natural or legal persons, places or other words where the use is required by Italian grammar».