Arrggghhhh!!!! – I can’t stop using exclamation marks!!!!!!
Dear Friends:
A library user asks us: “Can any reader assist me?...
Please help – am desperate!...I just can’t stop using EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!”
Naturally, the Blogbrary is always eager to help cure your addiction!
Try any of these!! – they’re great!!!
Another ‘Good-Un’ (as we often refer to them in the hallowed arena of the Bexley Senior Librarian’s Dining & Literary Society) would be Anton Chekhov’s celebrated novella The Exclamation Mark, in which the hero of the tale, an elderly civil servant, realises that after 40 years diligent bureaucratic labour, he has never used a single exclamation mark…! The results of this revelation are dramatic in the extreme, if you like classic Russian literature!!!!!!!!!
Still on the classics, I am mindful of the anecdote concerning Victor Hugo, the celebrated but frugal French novelist, who was once desperate to find out how his latest novel was selling, so he sent a telegram to his publisher asking “?”.
His publisher, equally, frugal, dryly replied “!”
Very droll.
Today, however, such brevity or wit is not associated with the exclamation mark, and is frowned upon by upmarket newspapers, where it is often referred to as a `screamer`, a `gasper`, or a `startler`. Modesty prevents me from describing what red-top tabloid journalists call it, but – suffice to say – it’s not very pleasant, and concerns canine anatomy. (!)
Anyway, should our original correspondent wish to pursue their grammatical studies further, then they could try this!
Or this!!!
Or even this!!!!
I do hope that’ll be of some assistance.
So, dear readers, that’s me done…
But rather than sign off in my usual ttfn fashion, I shall – on this occasion - say merely BYEEE!!!!!!!!!!!
