ARE you suffering from a nasty dose of bangorrhea?

The word is used to describe the overuse of exclamation marks.

Crime novelist Elmore Leonard in his ten rules of writing advised you use no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.

He wouldn't have lasted five minutes in a PR firm. 

Some of the press releases I get are peppered with more !s than a fight scene from the old Batman television programme.

Biff! Bang! Pow! worked brilliantly to punctuate the punch-ups Adam West and Burt Ward had with The Penguin and his henchmen, but the exclamation mark has no place in a piece promoting a firm that makes pipes for the offshore oil and gas industry.

Last week, I received a release which looked like the PR agency that penned it had replaced its usual roster of fashionistas and token bloke and signed up sixties pop art maestro Roy Lichtenstein, famed for the Whaam! image which turned the exclamation mark into a cultural icon.

It's often used to pep up a dry story, such as in another release from last week which included the line: "enabling us to continue delivering cutting edge technology solutions!"

As if the superfluous ! wasn't bad enough this included another of my pet hates which is the use of the word "solutions" to describe a firm's activities. Where once we had plumbers we now have people offering "a comprehensive range of plumbing solutions." 

Holy marketing speak Batman why won't these people use plain English?

THE best bits of this job are when you get the chance to see inside a factory or works. Yes, it's thrill-a-minute on the business desk I can assure you. 

Last week I was at Cleveland Bridge in Darlington, a grand old company that, as the name suggests, builds and designs bridges. Its structures span the rivers Tees, Tyne, Zambesi, Bosphorus as well as countless others. 

Continuing the theme of blunt speaking I caught up with plant boss Brian Rogan who was hosting a visit from the people running London's Crossrail project.

As I went into the room to pick up a high vis jacket and goggles, the hale and hearty Andrew Wolstenholme, Crossrail's chief executive, pointed to me and asked his host: "So, does this chap just write nice things about you then Brian?

"Does he heck," was Mr Rogan's curt response, which, in its own way, was the nicest thing anyone said to me last week.

The Echo's job is to celebrate success, and we do just that in this week's centre page feature that looks at Cleveland Bridge and some of the other North-East firms that are supplying Crossrail. But we also have to hold businesses to account if things go wrong.

This is not a PR agency!

Follow me on Twitter @bizecho