![]() In comic books, the very frequent use of exclamation mark is common-see Comics, below.įor information on the use of spaces after an exclamation mark, see the discussion of spacing after a full stop. Some authors, most notably Tom Wolfe, are known for unashamedly liberal use of the exclamation mark. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. Overly frequent use of the exclamation mark is generally considered poor writing, as it distracts the reader and decreases the mark's significance. This can be in protest or astonishment ("Out of all places, the squatter-camp?!") a few writers replace this with a single, nonstandard punctuation mark, the interrobang, which is the combination of a question mark and an exclamation mark. The exclamation mark is sometimes used in conjunction with the question mark. Informally, exclamation marks may be repeated for additional emphasis ("That's great!!!"), but this practice is generally considered unacceptable in formal prose. It has also been adopted in languages written in other scripts, such as languages written with Cyrillic or Arabic scripts, Chinese characters, and Devanagari.Ī sentence ending in an exclamation mark may represent an exclamation or an interjection (such as "Wow!", "Boo!"), or an imperative ("Stop!"), or may indicate astonishment or surprise: "They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" Exclamation marks are occasionally placed mid-sentence with a function similar to a comma, for dramatic effect, although this usage is obsolete: "On the walk, oh! there was a frightful noise." The exclamation mark is common to languages using the Latin alphabet, although usage varies slightly between languages. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. For example, the password communicated in the spoken phrase "Your password is em-zero-pee-aitch-bang-en-three" (" em-nought-pee-aitch-pling-en-three" in Commonwealth Hackish) is m0ph!n3. In hacker culture, the exclamation mark is called "bang", "shriek", or, in the British slang known as Commonwealth Hackish, " pling". In the printing world, the exclamation mark can be called a screamer, a gasper, a slammer, a dog's cock, or a startler. This "bang" usage is behind the names of the interrobang, an unconventional typographic character, and a shebang, a feature of Unix computer systems. In the 1950s, secretarial dictation and typesetting manuals in America referred to the mark as "bang", perhaps from comic books – where the ! appeared in dialogue balloons to represent a gun being fired – although the nickname probably emerged from letterpress printing. ![]() Now obsolete, the name ecphoneme was documented in the early 20th century. Slang and other names for the exclamation mark Instead the user typed a full stop and then backspaced and overtyped an apostrophe. Many older or portable typewriters did not have the exclamation mark. It was later called by many names, including point of admiration (1611), note of exclamation or admiration (1657), sign of admiration or exclamation, exclamation point (1824), and finally, exclamation mark (1839). In the 15th century, the exclamation mark was introduced into English printing to show emphasis. Over time, the i moved above the o that o first became smaller, and (with time) a dot. One theory of its origin posits derivation from a Latin exclamation of joy, namely io, analogous to "hurray" copyists wrote the Latin word io at the end of a sentence, to indicate expression of joy. Graphically, the exclamation mark is represented by variations on the theme of a full stop point with a vertical line above. ![]()
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