Ye Olde Scope Notes: What’s With All the Exclamation Marks?!
(Waving a rickety old cane in the air)
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In my day, no one spoke in the library – they couldn’t! Libraries were sealed and the oxygen was pumped out, creating a vacuum! And now look what we’ve come to – every picture book seems to end in an exclamation mark. Librarians, all this merriment is going to be the end of us! I ask you, weblog reader – what do you see in common among these books?
Beware – the exclamation mark is on the rise, friends. The tyranny of excitement and fun is upon us. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at what the Google had to say when I ran an Ngram search for “!”:
(click to enlarge)
Previous Ye Olde Scope Notes posts:
Is This a Book Order or a Toy Catalog?!
Filed under: Articles
About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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! Way to demonstrate a trend! Love it!
Love this! I’d pair it with what I think is a decrease in the use of spaces – what were two words, are often now one word. Only based on a hunch which has come from comparing old and new editions of Richard Scarry’s Best word book ever.
That’s interesting – I’ll have to give that new edition a look
We appear to be inching dangerously close to the .083% threshold marking the beginning of the roaring 20s. Be assured, if we continue to punctuate in the manner, the future will not be bleak. Try saying Tyler Makes Spaghetti without the exclamation point. I just doesn’t work, does it?
I checked out David Wiesner’s new book today and immediately laughed — Mr. Wuffles!
The sub-editor on my first newspaper referred to exclamation marks as “dogs’ cocks”. Enough said.
That is so fun to realize how popular the ! is !!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree!!!