Iam NOT happy! In a quiz on the Melbourne Cup, I used what perhaps were an over-abundance of exclamation marks (!) The style/grammar police soon made me see my wicked ways. Where I had used two !!, I reduced them to one. Consequently, Rupert ( or whatever his name is) appeared satisfied, and the quiz was sent off for editor approval. Lo and behold, when I viewed the on-line version of the quiz, ALL the exclamation marks had disappeared! I know the advice you will offer me: "take it up with the person who edited the quiz." Well, that's difficult in this instance for reasons I do not wish to elaborate on.

Why am I so upset? The quiz is a damn good one. Any punctuation marks used were intended to enhance its quality, and I fail to see how exclamation marks used sparingly and appropriately could have caused anyone a nightmare.

Finally, if there IS a good, legitimate, valid, sensible reason for the omission of those !! marks, please share it with me. Oh, and by the way, is it a hanging offence to include a little humour when adding interesting info, or is even a mere soupcon of light-heartedness frowned upon? And yes, I want those deleted ! marks re-instated!

Rufus the automated robot DETECTS potential problems, like people writing "The answer is yellow!!!!!!!!". He doesn't change your quiz. In no style of accepted English writing that I know of are multiple exclamations required. Single exclamations should suffice. I can assure you that the automated system is not stripping your single !'s. Perhaps an editor did.

Terry

An English teacher once told me "use exclamation points for something that is to be yelled at the top of one's lungs. You can't yell twice as loud as your voice will allow you, so you don't use more than one exclamation point."

Chippy, that's good advice. I can't tell you how many quizzes I've seen lately where it seems that every sentence ends with an exclamation point. It's great to be excited about a topic, but it gets a little boring (?) and annoying to see everything end like this! (Or even like this!!!!!!) Also, using exclamation points all the time kind of 'reduces' the effect they have. It's sort of like when you hear profanity all the time, you get desensitized to it.

There was a great Seinfeld episode where Elaine broke up with her boyfriend because he failed to use enough exclamation marks.

Terry

I think I saw a question on that in a Seinfeld quiz I edited recently...

However, the best 'Seinfeld' episode was the one in the parking garage.

hah that one was good. my favorite bit ever was when Jerry went to rent a car and was told that his reservation wasn't available. The Chinese restaurant one was one of the better ones too.

Terry

Ahem! Getting back to exclamation marks ...

The overuse of ANY punctuation mark is tedious and annoying to the reader. I am not the editor who edited the quiz mentioned above, but please be assured that if I had been, I would have removed the extra exclamation marks. They are redundant.

As the great Fowler observed in his book, "The King's English" (1906):
"An excessive use of exclamation marks is a certain indication of an unpractised writer or of one who wants to add a spurious dash of sensation to something unsensational".

(Can you tell I'm a teacher? )

Well, I am an editor who sees this all the time, and it does get incredibly tedious.Especially with qiuzzes where the author cannot think of any interesting info for a video game that they like and simply put "Because it does!!!!!"
As editors, we are under a lot of pressure, so this bot does definitely help.

Thank you Terry and the rest of you for your responses. I did only use a maximum of two !! at a time, and they did not appear at the end of every sentence.
Neither were they intended to give the impression I was shouting. Exclamation marks (or points as you good folk in America call them) are used, inter alia, for emphasis, irony, humour, etc.) In the case of my quiz, they were inserted to stimulate interest and - heaven help me - to add lighter touches here and there so that I could (hopefully) stop anyone kind enough to attempt it, from becoming bored. My first thread was posted late at night, I had consumed a considerable amount of Reiling! (N.B. only ONE !) and if I became disproportionately upset, please accept my apologies. My extra special best wishes to you all.

P.S. Would anyone else care to join the crowd of four members who have already played my Melbourne Cup quiz?

LadyMacB and Terry, the best Seinfeld episode by FAR is the Soup Nazi one! You two should be ashamed of yourselves for not mentioning it! lol

I'd like to say your Melbourne cup quiz is very good and entertaining....even if I did only get 16/25! Notice only one exclamation point there. By the way if only one reisling gets you this fired up, what does 5 or 6 do?!? (still only one exclamation point here guys don't panic.) Perhaps it was ONE cask, not ONE glass? This is where I point out light hearted humour....

Um, I think over-using exclamation marks is OK, 5 or 6 exclamation marks just describes how suprised you are. Exclamation marks are a normal way of ending a sentence and I think the editor should NOT have removed all the exclamation marks, pure ridiculous.

P.S. I think this forum was started as a sequel to the forum titled 'warning'.

As I have already said above:

The overuse of ANY punctuation mark is tedious and annoying to the reader. It visually clutters the sentence.

One of the basic functions of an exclamation mark is to indicate how "surprised" you are. One alone will do that. To use more than one is redundant.

Would you use two apostrophes in a word like can't (as in can''t)?

Would you use two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence as I have here.?

Of course not - because it's not necessary and it contravenes the basic rules of English punctuation and grammar.

Um, MotherGoose the two examples you provided are grammar errors. Multiple exclamation marks just denotes that you are more suprised than if you only put one exclamation mark.

"Multiple exclamation marks just denotes that you are more suprised than if you only put one exclamation mark."

No, it doesn't! And nor does using multiple question marks indicate that you are more puzzled than someone who only uses one at the end of a sentence.

I totally agree with you, d2407

Can I put my two cents in? I think the discussion is heading in the direction of fine lines. There is a fine line between written grammar and typing/writing like you're talking.

I think in a forum like this it's OK since we're "talking," but as MotherGoose and ladymacb29 pointed out, on the quizzes, it needs to be the grammar rules that you would follow in school or at your job when you're writing a paper.

Just my two cents.

At FunTrivia, quizzes need to be constructed using the basic principles of English spelling, grammar and punctuation. The reason we are so strict about this is because FunTrivia is an international website and there are many players whose native tongue is not English. For people who have learned English as a second language, and who have been taught the "proper" version, the use of non-standard variations can be very confusing. This is why we also crack down on slang, abbreviations and chatspeak. This policy tries to ensure that quizzes are as fair as possible to ALL players.

MotherGoose you know how you said

Quote:

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Would you use two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence as I have here.?

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What about the few times we write !? or ?! at the end of a sentance is that ok, because once they did introduce a new punctuation mark which was used especially for this situation. (It looked like a ? with a ! directly on top of it.) However this mark has now disappeared from useage. basically would ?! be ok, or would the author have to choose which punctuation mark to use?

Dear Nemesis,

The use of both an exclamation mark and a question mark is not considered standard or correct punctuation in English. You would never see it in a serious piece of writing, for example, a scientific paper or a history book, although you might see it in a novel, a play or a piece of writing which was relating a conversation.

The combined punctuation mark to which you refer was called an interrobang. You might find the following information interesting.


(1) From http://www.interrobang-mks.com/

The INTERROBANG: A twentieth century punctuation mark.
The INTERROBANG has been described as "an obscure punctuation mark." The purpose of this page is to move the INTERROBANG from the obscure to the ubiquitous.

A SHORT HISTORY

As an advocate of precision in communication, the concept of the INTERROBANG was introduced by Martin K. Speckter in 1962 in an article written for TYPEtalks Magazine.*
The INTERROBANG was created to fill a gap in our punctuation system where writers often used typographically cumbersome and unattractive combinations of the question mark and exclamation mark to punctuate rhetorical statements where neither the question nor an exclamation alone exactly served the writer. (HOW ABOUT THAT?!)

Mr. Speckter called his mark INTERROBANG from the Latin for query and the proofreader's term for exclamation. Most dictionaries have spelled the word correctly, although several other spellings with no logical genesis have appeared.

At the time the INTERROBANG was introduced in 1962, a number of graphic designs were sent to the magazine from many sources. An example from this outpouring is shown above. Many newspapers and magazines and talk shows reported on the new mark. In an April, 1962 editorial, The Wall Street Journal deemed this punctuation exactly right for "'Who forgot to put gas in the car?' where the question mark alone just isn't adequate." The INTERROBANG can convey in print an attitude, curiosity, and wonder.

American Type Founders issued a metal typeface in 1966 called Americana which included the INTERROBANG. Remington Rand included the key as an option on its 1968 typewriters, commenting that the INTERROBANG "expresses Modern Life's Incredibility." In 1996, a New York art studio designed variations of the mark for each of the fonts in its computer library.

You can find an interrobang in Microsoft Word's Fonts. Go to Format, choose Fonts, then Wingdings 2. You'll find 4 different versions of the interrobang. Hit the ` ~ key, the ] } key, the 6 ^ key, or the - _ key.


(2) From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang

The interrobang is an English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of a question mark and an exclamation point. The typographical character resembles those marks superimposed over one another.

The interrobang is not a standard punctuation mark. Few modern typefaces or fonts include an interrobang among the available characters.

Application

Depending on your perspective, a sentence that ends in an interrobang either asks a question in an excited manner or expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question.

For example:

How much did you spend on those shoes?!
You're going out with Marika?!
You traveled to Paris on a submarine?!

Instead of the interrobang, many writers, especially in informal writing, use multiple punctuation marks to end a sentence expressing surprise and question:

He did what?!
The question mark usually comes first (likely due to its position on a QWERTY keyboard), although there is no universal style rule on the subject.

It is not uncommon for writers in very informal situations (or deliberate parodies) to use several question marks and exclamation marks for even more emphasis:

He did what?!?!?!
Like multiple exclamation marks and multiple question marks, such strings are generally considered very poor style.

Writers used such multiple punctuation marks for decades before the interrobang was invented. They were prevalent in informal media such as print ads and comic books. It was also used in chess commentary with "!?" showing an interesting move that may not be the best, and "?!" showing a dubious move that may nevertheless be difficult to refute.

History

American Martin K. Speckter concocted the interrobang itself in 1962. As the head of an advertising agency, Speckter believed that ads would look better if advertising copywriters conveyed surprised queries using a single mark. He proposed the interrobang concept in an article in the magazine TYPEtalks. Speckter solicited possible names for the new character from readers. Contenders included 'rhet', 'exclarotive', and 'exclamaquest', but he settled on 'interrobang'.

Speckter chose the name to reference the punctuation marks that inspired it. 'Interrogatio' is Latin for 'question' or 'query'; 'bang' is printers' slang for 'exclamation point'.

Graphic treatments for the new mark were also submitted in response to the article.

In 1966, Richard Isbell of American Type Founders issued the Americana typeface and included the interrobang as one of the characters. In 1968, an interrobang key was available on some Remington typewriters. During the 1970s, it was possible to buy replacement interrobang keycaps and strikers for some Smith-Corona typewriters. The interrobang was in vogue for much of the 1960s, with the word 'interrobang' appearing in some dictionaries and the mark itself being featured in magazine and newspaper articles.

The interrobang failed to amount to more than a fad, however, never becoming a standard punctuation mark. Most fonts don't include it. But it has not disappeared: Microsoft provides several versions of the interrobang character as part of the Wingdings 2 character set available with Microsoft Office; it is present in the fonts Lucida Sans Unicode and Arial Unicode MS; and of course it was accepted into Unicode.

Trivia

It is also featured in Michael Gerber's Barry Trotter books (parodies of Harry Potter) as Barry's scar; it therefore features in some of the cover images.

A reverse and upside down interrobang (combining ¿ and ¡), suitable for starting phrases in Spanish, is called by some a gnaborretni (interrobang backwards).

The use of two (or even three) exclamation marks and of an exclamation mark with together with a question-mark is - du heiliger Schreck!! - one of the more amusing accepted features of German punctuation, but it's not considered acceptable in English, except possibly as a joke. So I find myself in agreement with MotherGoose.