People of Earth.
Now that you have elected me to the honoured position of Benevolent Dictator for Life, there are several rules which I must make clear.
- Exclamation marks shall be known forever as exclamation marks and not exclamation points. (Computer scientists are except from the first part of this regulation and may continue to refer to such a mark as a bang).
- Exclamation marks may be used for exclamations (“Ooh, What A Scorcher!”) or to express an imperative (“Hop Off, You Frogs!”).
- Exclamation marks may not be used in place of full stops at the end of other sentences without written sanction from the Board of Humour and Jollity.
- Exclamation marks may never be placed next to one another for to do so makes the angels weep.
- Exclamation marks may be used in parentheses only by those who have received a recognised higher qualification in irony (!)
- Offenders will initially be limited to a ration of 1 exclamation mark per month and be subject to a period of re-education.
- Persistent offenders will be thrown into the Outer Darkness where there is Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth.
By keeping to these laws we may live in peace and harmony and all our ways shall prosper.
That is all.
Has the use of txtspeak never tempted you to come out of retirement? 😉
Am not here confirming that I’m among their number, but I gather that the especially-stylish/appalling have been known to draw stars or wee hearts over “i”, enough surely to make the Wee Circle Folk (great name! :-)) seem like Copperplate on an Illuminated manuscript 😉
Stars and wee hearts I really like but have, sadly, never seen. At one stage I was assistant archivist in the last school I taught in and had some fine MSS in my purview, none, unfortunately, with wee hearts, not even the Nuremberg Chronicle though it had some braw illuminated capitals and many highly imaginative woodcuts of foreign parts and some indigenes who would make the Wee Circle Folk look pretty humdrum.
Didn’t the late People’s Princess Diana use the little hearts?
¿Your Humbleness for Life, do these dictates only apply to those of the English Mother Tongue? We of Other Mother Tongues have our own rules and punctuation.
Applies to English only.
(which is why computer scientists are offered certain exemptions too)
Ooh, can Glasweigans get to use those cool funny upside down ? marks too please? And what about the use of ?#@ to make swearing more palatable? (Arguably a v.Glasweigan linguistic concern!)
I tempt all sinners to an article where they may be helped:
http://kenny-macaulay.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html
I would forward that another acceptable exemption on coupling exclamation marks and/or question marks is in chess annotation. Quoting Wikipedia (for speed):
! (a particularly good—and usually surprising—move)
!! (an excellent move)
? (a bad move)
?? (a blunder)
!? (an interesting move that may not be best)
?! (a dubious move – one which may turn out to be bad)
Here endeth the lesson.
Same notation applies to Backgammon.