Exclamation mark

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"!" redirects here. For other uses, see ! (disambiguation).

an 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 generally 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 brand names contain an exclamation mark (examples include the search engine Yahoo! and the game show Jeopardy!). The titles of several musical comedies such as Oklahoma! and Oh! Calcutta! also contain exclamation marks.

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.

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 the Spanish language, 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!")

German

In German, the exclamation mark has several specific uses for which English employs other forms of punctuation:

In the salutation line of a letter, for which English uses a comma: Lieber Hans! (English: "Dear Hans,")

On all signs, not just those warning of danger as discussed below: Betreten verboten! (English: "No trespassing")

At the end of an imperative sentence: Ruf mich morgen an! (English: "Call me tomorrow.")

As a letter

In Khoisan languages, and the International Phonetic Alphabet, the exclamation mark is used as a letter to indicate the postalveolar click sound (represented as q in Zulu orthography). In Unicode, this letter is properly coded as U+01C3 (ǃ) 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 (ˀ).

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

Warning signs are often an exclamation mark enclosed within a triangle

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.

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

A computer warning message (example).

In computer programming, the exclamation mark corresponds to ASCII character 33 (21 in hexadecimal). It is therefore found in Unicode at U+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 found in the Oxford English Dictionary dating from the 1860s. In the BBC BASIC programming language (and BCPL) it is called a pling and is used to reference a 32-bit word.

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.

In UNIX shell and Perl scripting, "!" is usually used after a "#" in the first line of a script to tell the OS what program to use to run the script. This is usually called a "hash-bang" (see also: Shebang).

Internet culture

In recent Internet culture, especially where leet is used, 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 shift key 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 be typed by accident.

Fandom

In fandom, "!" 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, or Vamp!Willow in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. 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". [1]

Music

A music group, based in Sacramento, California and New York City, NY has utilized the exclamation point to spell its name: !!!. The band's name is pronounced as "any syllable repeated three times"; the most frequent alpha respelling is "chk chk chk", pronounced as "Chick Chick Chick". Other pronunciations include "Pow Pow Pow" and "Bang Bang Bang". It is less often referred to as "Exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point", as that has proven too verbose.

Comics

This Action Comics cover from 1959 ends every sentence with an exclamation mark or question mark. Often, few or no periods would be used in the entire book.

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. As printing improved, this technique fell out of favor, but is still sometimes used to invoke a retro feel.

In comic books and comics in general, a large exclamation mark is often used in the proximity of a character's head to indicate surprise. A question mark can be used in the same way. This practice also appears in some computer and video games.

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." [2]

Sarcasm

In writing, especially British, a (!) symbol (an exclamation mark within parentheses) implies that a character has made an obviously sarcastic comment eg: "Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a really useful invention.(!)" ^{[citation needed]}

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