Exclamation mark

An exclamation mark, exclamation point or bang, "!", is usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feeling. An exclamation mark is a punctuation mark, and like the full stop (or period), it marks the end of a sentence. A sentence ending in an exclamation mark is either an actual exclamation ("Wow!", "Boo!"), a command ("Stop!"), or is intended to be astonishing in some way ("They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!").

In typesetting or printing (and therefore when spelling text out orally), the exclamation mark is called a screamer or bang.

For use of spaces after an exclamation mark, see the discussion for the full stop.

Origins

The symbol is believed to originate from the Latin word io, an exclamation of joy. It was formed either as a digraph of the letters I and O, or as the letter I (for io) above a full stop.

Natural languages

Advertising and literature

Frequent use of the exclamation mark is common in writing in advertising. Some brands cleverly, but confusingly, contain an exclamation mark (examples include the search engine Yahoo! and the game show Jeopardy!) Some comic books, especially superhero comics of the mid-20th century, routinely use the exclamation mark instead of the period, as periods tended to disappear due to cheap printing processes. Overuse of the exclamation mark is generally considered poor writing, since it distracts the reader and reduces the mark's meaning. Some authors however, most notably the American Tom Wolfe, are known for unashamedly liberal use of the exclamation mark. The titles of several musical comedies such as Oklahoma! and Oh! Calcutta! also contain exclamation marks.

Place names

The English town of Westward Ho!, named after the novel by Charles Kingsley, is the only place name in the United Kingdom that officially contains an exclamation mark. There is a town in Quebec called Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, which officially contains two exclamation marks in its name.

Eastern languages

The exclamation mark is also used in Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese (which do not use Latin script).

Spanish

In some languages, such as Spanish, a sentence or clause ending in an exclamation mark must also begin with an inverted exclamation mark (the same also applies to the question mark):

¿Estás loco? ¡La mataste! (English: "Are you crazy? You killed her!")

As a letter

In Khoisan languages, and the International Phonetic Alphabet, the exclamation mark is used as a letter to indicate the retroflex click sound (represented as q in Zulu orthography). In Unicode, this letter is properly coded as U+01C3 () and distinguished from the common punctuation symbol U+0021 (!) to allow software to deal properly with word breaks.

Phonetics

The exclamation mark has sometimes been used as a phonetic symbol to indicate that a consonant is ejective. More commonly this is represented by an apostrophe, or a superscript glottal stop symbol ().

Interrobang

There is a punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of a question mark and an exclamation mark in English called interrobang, which resembles those marks superimposed over one another ("") but the sequence of "!?" is used more often.

Warnings

Exclamation marks are used to emphasize a warning.

On warning signs, an exclamation mark is often used to draw attention to a warning of danger, hazards and the unexpected. These signs are common in hazardous environments or on potentially dangerous equipment. A common type of this warning is a yellow triangle with a black exclamation mark, but a white triangle with a red border is common on European road warning signs.

Fan fiction

In fan fiction, "!" is used to signify a defining quality in a character, as in romantic!Draco from Harry Potter fandom. Almost always the character in question is a canon character, and most often the quality is one that is unusual, or non-canon. Occasionally, the "!" notation will describe a physical appearance thought to trigger certain reactions, as in shirtless!Vaughn from Alias. The origin of this usage is unknown, although it is hypothesized to have originated with certain Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, for example, "Football Player!Leonardo", "Rockstar!Raphael", and "Breakdancer!Michaelangelo".

Mathematics

In mathematics the symbol represents the factorial operation. The expression n! means "the product of the integers from 1 to n". For example, 4! (read four factorial) is 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 24. (0! is defined as 1, which is a neutral element in multiplication, not multiplied by anything.)

Computers

In computer programming, the exclamation mark corresponds to ASCII character 33 (21 in hexadecimal). It is therefore found in Unicode at 0021. The inverted exclamation mark is found in ISO-8859-1, 9 and 15 at position 161 (A1_HEX) and therefore in unicode at U+00A1.

Several computer languages use "!" for various meanings, most importantly for logical negation; e.g. A != B means "A is not equal to B", and !A means "the logical negation of A" (also called "not A"). In this context, the exclamation is named the bang character; other programmers call it a shriek or screech. Invented in the US, it is claimed that bang is from Unix and shriek from Stanford or MIT; however, shriek is known to have been in use in the 1860s. In the BBC BASIC programming language (and BCPL) it is called a pling and is used to reference a 32-bit word (see also: Shebang).

Plings are also used in Acorn RISC OS to denote an "appfolder": a folder that when double clicked executes a program file inside called !Run. Other files in the appfolder generally contain resources the application needs to run. The appfolder can be viewed as a normal folder by double-clicking with the shift key held down. In addition, other special resource files such as !Boot (executed the first time the application containing it comes into view of the filer) and !Sprites (an icon file containing icon definitions loaded if !Boot cannot be found) also start with a pling.

Early e-mail systems also used the exclamation point as a separator character between hostnames for routing information, usually referred to as "bang path" notation.

In the IRC protocol, a user's nickname and ident are separated by an exclamation point in the hostmask assigned to him or her by the server.

In the Geek Code version 3, "!" is used before a letter to denote that the geek refuses to participate in the topic at hand. In some cases, it has an alternate meaning, such as G! denoting a geek of no qualifications, !d denoting not wearing any clothes, P! denoting not being allowed to use Perl, and so on. They all share some negative connotations however.

When computer programs display messages that alert the user, an exclamation mark may be shown alongside it to indicate that the message is important and should be read. This often happens when an error is made, or to obtain user consent for hazardous operations such as deleting data.

Internet culture

In recent Internet culture, an excessive way of expressing exclamation in text is seen as !!!!!!111. This notation originates from the eagerness to add multiple exclamation marks but failing to hit the keyboard combination properly. Later this behaviour has evolved into a sign of recognition for certain Internet cultures who now intentionally add 1s after their expressions either to ridicule people who do it without purpose or as a sign of recognition towards others who also are familiar with the behaviour. As a further pun to this development of linguistics, some add literal ones such as !!!eleventyone!!111one! to explicitly state that their use of 1s was intentionally typed, since eleventyone cannot easily be typed by accident.

Video games

In the Metal Gear Solid series, an exclamation mark appears above a guard's head when they spot Solid Snake (MGS1) Raiden (MGS2) or Naked Snake (MGS3).

The Wild Arms role-playing game series uses exclamation points to indicate a potential random battle, which can be avoided sometimes if certain criteria are met.

Comics

In comics, a large exclamation mark is often used in the proximity of a character's head to indicate surprise.

Some comic artists regularly use an exclamation mark to stop virtually every sentence, even when a period would be more appropriate. The origin of the practice can be traced to the fact that many artists believed that the period would be lost in the printing process.

Chess

In chess notation "!" denotes a good move and "!!" an excellent move. For details see punctuation (chess). Likewise, in some chess variants such as large board Shogi variants, "!" is used to record pieces capturing by stationary feeding or burning.

Baseball

Exclamation marks or asterisks can be used on scorecards to denote a "great defensive play." ^*

Sarcasm

In writing, especially British, a (!) symbol (an exclamation mark within parentheses) implies that a character has made an obviously sarcastic comment eg: "That's a great idea Ali (!)"

Punctuation | Typography

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