He is not used often, which increases the perceived weight he has when he is used, which encourages you to use him even less.
He is not used often, which increases the perceived weight he has when he is used, which encourages you to use him even less.
I try to use him as much as possible. He expresses a grammatical meaning, not a rhetorical one! I don't have declaim any words louder and faster when I use him!
Many people today sneer at him. But that’s because they are wretched ironyworms who wouldn’t dare express a sincere opinion even if they were capable of holding one.
He is a fine fellow and I salute him.
This is now an EXAMPLES OF EXCELLENT EXCLAMATION POINTS thread!
Half-a-dozen to kick things off:—
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven —
All’s right with the world!
— Browning
Seht, ich lehre euch den Übermenschen!
Der Übermensch ist der Sinn der Erde. Euer Wille sage: der Übermensch sei der Sinn der Erde!
— Nietzsche
Drink! for you not know whence you came, nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
— Fitzgerald [tr.]
Rowing in Eden —
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor — Tonight —
In Thee!
— Emily Dickinson
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
— Kipling
To Anarchy, however million-headed, there is no victory possible. Patience, silence, diligence, ye chosen of the world! Slowly or fast in the course of time you will grow to a minority that can actually step forth (sword not yet drawn, but sword ready to be drawn), and say “here are we, Sirs; we also are minded to vote, — to all lengths, as you may perceive. A company of poor men (as friend Oliver termed us) who will spend all our blood, if needful!” What are Beales and his 50,000 roughs against such; what are the noisiest anarchic Parliaments, in majority of a million to one, against such? Stubble against fire. Fear not, my friend; the issue is very certain when it comes so far as this!
— Carlyle
Highly based taste. The last quote is from History of the French Revolution right?
"Shooting Niagara"
Ah, thanks.
Exclamation Point Gang a bit quiet for some reason. Never mind. Another half-dozen to keep things going:
“Look at me now,” he tells the guys and lifts a glass to the light, “getting my first glass of orange juice in six months. Hooee, that’s good. I ask you, what did I get for breakfast at that work farm? What was I served? Well, I can describe what it *looked* like, but I sure couldn’t hang a name on it; morning noon and night it was burnt black and had potatoes in it and looked like roofing glue. I know one thing; it wasn’t orange juice. Look at me now: bacon, toast, butter, eggs — coffee the little honey in the kitchen even asks me if I like it black or white thank you — and a great! big! cold glass of orange juice. Why, you couldn’t *pay* me to leave this place!”
— Kesey
Verweile doch! Du bist so schön!
— Goethe
On Astur’s throat Horatius right firmly pressed his heel,
And thrice and four times tugged amain, ere he wrenched out the steel.
“And see,” he cried, “the welcome, fair guests, that waits you here!
What noble Lucumo comes next to taste our Roman cheer?”
— Macaulay
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
— Matthew
. . . O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
— Shakespeare
Au fond, ca m’est bien egal. All I know is that while the Haze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, my knees were like reflections of knees in rippling water, and my lips were like sand, and —
“That was my Lo,” she said, “and these are my lilies.”
“Yes,” I said, “yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!”
— Nabokov
What I notice is that it seems to be used most in sentences that are either short or where the exclaimed part is right at the end of the sentence, since your mind will pick up on it before actually reading those words.
The exception here being the shakespeare one, where it's intended to be stage directions for the actor
Sometimes you get an exclamation at the end of what is technically one long sentence. (e.g. "If".) But yes, short sentences (or at least short distinct clauses) are more common. I don't think that's a matter of alerting the reader's eye, though. I think it's just because you can't sustain intense energy for a long time.
The main pattern I noticed was that in prose they’re mostly found in direct speech. Characters can use them; authors can't. (When it is the author, it's someone who addresses the reader directly — Carlyle, Melville, etc.)
Anyway, here are another half-dozen to keep things going. Come on, people. Let's hear some favourites.
The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
— Burns
To blow this horn was for me a real pleasure, almost a vice. I will go further and declare that if I were obliged to record, in a roll of
honour, those activities which in the course of my interminable existence have given me only a mild pain in the balls, the blowing of a rubber horn — toot! — would figure among the first.
— Beckett
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!
— Sylvia Plath
Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage — and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!
— Melville
O woman, shapely as the swan,
In a cunning house hard-reared was I:
O bosom white, O well-shaped palm,
I shall not die!
— Colum
Toad went a little faster; then faster still, and faster.
He heard the gentlemen call out warningly, “Be careful, washerwoman!” And this annoyed him, and he began to lose his head.
The driver tried to interfere, but he pinned him down in his seat with one elbow, and put on full speed. The rush of air in his face, the hum of the engines, and the light jump of the car beneath him intoxicated his weak brain. “Washerwoman, indeed!” he shouted recklessly. “Ho! ho! I am the Toad, the motor-car snatcher, the prison-breaker, the Toad who always escapes! Sit still, and you shall know what driving really is, for you are in the hands of the famous, the skilful, the entirely fearless Toad!”
— Grahame
>it's just because you can't sustain intense energy for a long time
This is the most beta punctuation in the english language, it makes every sentence seem like a caption to this pic related
It's kind of odd to me how this is the only tone-based punctuation we have in the entire language.
The tilde, when used properly.
Isn't the tilde only for foreign languages? I thought it was only still on the standard english keyboard for programmers
You can use it to imply a singsong to~ne.
The question mark?
>question mark
Not the same, strictly speaking, because the exclamation mark is always optional and the question mark usually isn't.
Take any normal sentence. You can choose to end with a full stop or an exclamation mark. It's a question of tone, not grammar:
"I don't think so."
"I don't think so!" <— BOTH CORRECT
But the question mark is dictated by the grammar. If the sentence is a question, you have to have a question mark:
"Was Nietzsche's facial hair based or cringe?"
"Was Nietzsche's facial hair based or cringe." <— NOT CORRECT
It's true that you can (sort of) do it the other way, i.e. make something into a question by adding a question mark:
"You're coming." <— STATEMENT (POSSIBLY A STERN COMMAND)
"You’re coming?" <— QUESTION
But that's just a function of life being complicated and rules twisting all over the place like drunken beavers.
he's good for the punchline for jokes, that's it
>at the end of a sentence so it only has effect in retrospect
Worst punctuation mark.
Nice thread!
Here's one from Kavafy, I like
Ξέρει που γέρασε πολύ· το νοιώθει, το κυττάζει.
Κ’ εν τούτοις ο καιρός που ήταν νέος μοιάζει
σαν χθες. Τι διάστημα μικρό, τι διάστημα μικρό.
Και συλλογιέται η Φρόνησις πως τον εγέλα·
και πως την εμπιστεύονταν πάντα — τι τρέλλα! —
την ψεύτρα που έλεγε· «Aύριο. Έχεις πολύν καιρό.»
He knows he’s aged a lot: he sees it, feels it.
Yet it seems he was young just yesterday.
So brief an interval, so very brief.
And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him,
how he always believed—what madness!—
that cheat who said: “Tomorrow. You have plenty of time.”