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Typographical symbols and punctuation marks are marks and symbols used in typography with a variety of purposes such as to help with legibility and accessibility, or to identify special cases. This list gives those most commonly encountered with Latin script. For a far more comprehensive list of symbols and signs, see List of Unicode characters.
SymbolName Of The Symbol [a]Similar Glyphs Or Concepts◌́Apostrophe, Grave, Circumflex❦ ❧Dingbat, Dinkus, Hedera, Index≈Tilde, Double hyphen&plus signThe apostrophe ( ' or ’) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for three basic purposes: The marking of the omission of one or more letters, e.g. the contraction of "do not" to "don't".
- History
- Slang and Other Names For The Exclamation Mark
- Languages
- Proper Names
- Warnings
- Use in Various Fields
- See Also
- Further Reading
Graphically, the exclamation mark is represented by variations on the theme of a full stop point with a vertical line above. One theory of its origin posits derivation from a Latin exclamation of joy, namely io, analogous to "hooray"; copyists wrote the Latin word io at the end of a sentence, to indicate expression of joy. Over time, the i moved ab...
Now obsolete, the name ecphonemewas documented in the early 20th century. In the 1950s, secretarial dictation and typesetting manuals in America referred to the mark as "bang", perhaps from comic books – where the ! appeared in dialogue bubbles to represent a gun being fired – although the nickname probably emerged from letterpress printing. This "...
The exclamation mark is mainly used in languages that use the Latin alphabet, although usage varies slightly. It has also been adopted in languages written in other scripts, such as languages written with Cyrillic or Arabic scripts, Chinese characters, and Devanagari.
Although not part of dictionary words, exclamation marks appear in some brand names and trade names, including Yum! Brands (parent of fast food chains like Taco Bell and KFC), Web services Yahoo! and Joomla!, and the online game Kahoot!. It appears in the titles of stage and screen works, especially comedies and musicals; examples include the game ...
Exclamation marks are used to emphasize a precautionary statement. On warning signs, an exclamation mark is often used to draw attention to a warning of danger, hazards, and the unexpected. These signs are common in hazardous environments or on potentially dangerous equipment. A common type of this warning is a yellow triangle with a black exclamat...
Mathematics and formal logic
In elementary mathematics, the symbol represents the factorial operation. The expression n! means "the product of the integers from 1 to n". For example, 4! (read four factorial) is 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 24. (0! is defined as 1, which is a neutral element in multiplication, not multiplied by anything.) Additionally, it can also represent the uniqueness quantifier or, if used in front of a number, it can represent a subfactorial. In linear logic, the exclamation mark denotes one of the modalities th...
Computing
In computing, the exclamation mark is ASCII character 33 (21 in hexadecimal). Due to its availability on even early computers, the character was used for many purposes. The name given to "!" by programmers varies according to their background, though it was very common to give it a short name to make reading code aloud easier. "Bang" is very popular. In the UK the term pling was popular in the earlier days of computing, whilst in the United States, the term shriek was used. It is claimed that...
Video games
The exclamation mark can be used in video games to signify that a character is startled or alarmed. In the Metal Gear and Paper Marioseries, an exclamation mark appears over enemies' heads when they notice the player. In massively multiplayer online (MMO) games such as World of Warcraft, an exclamation mark hovering over a character's head is often used to indicate that they are offering a quest for the player to complete. In Dota 2, an exclamation mark is shown above the head of a unit if it...
Hazrat, Florence (2022). An admirable point : a brief history of the exclamation mark!. London: Profile Books. ISBN 978-1800811973.
- Exclamation point
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21 hours ago · CNN —. When President Joe Biden made clear that he was going to run for reelection, I had a sense of what his election strategy was and thought it was an intelligent path to victory. After the ...
Linguistics. In most areas of linguistics, but especially in syntax, a question mark in front of a word, phrase or sentence indicates that the form in question is strongly dispreferred, "questionable" or "strange", but not outright ungrammatical. [b] (The asterisk is used to indicate outright ungrammaticality.
