
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
"Splendid exploration"— Wall Street Journal Few punctuation marks elicit quite as much love or hate as the exclamation mark. It's bubbly and exuberant, an emotional amplifier whose flamboyantly dramatic gesture lets the reader know: here be feelings! Scott Fitzgerald famously stated exclamation marks are like laughing at your own joke; Terry Pratchett had a character say that multiple!!! are a 'sure sign of a diseased mind'. So what's the deal with!? Whether you think it's over-used, or enthusiastically sprinkle your writing with it, ! is inescapable. An Admirable Point recuperates the exclamation mark from its much maligned place at the bottom of the punctuation hierarchy. It explores how! came about in the first place some six hundred years ago, and uncovers the many ways in which! has left its mark on art, literature, (pop) culture, and just about any sphere of human activity—from Beowulf to spam emails, ee cummings to neuroscience.
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Information
Table of contents
- Copyright
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction: The spiked delights of !
- Chapter one – A very pathetical point: ! through the ages
- Chapter two – The period that blew its top: Thinking and feeling !
- Chapter three – ‘so !f!’: Literature and the flaming pink scarf
- Chapter four – Oi!!!: Perking up with punctuation
- Chapter five – Radiating punctuation: Exclamatory politics and the nuclear bomb
- Chapter six – At your fingertips: Digital !
- Epilogue: Quo vadis!
- Thanks!
- Images!