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An exclamation mark (also exclamation point, and (rarely) mark of admiration) is a punctuation mark or, more pedantically, a tone mark. Like the full stop (or period), it marks the end of a sentence. A sentence ending in an exclamation mark is either an actual exclamation, "Wow!", a command, "Stop!", or is intended to be astonishing in some way, "They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"
In type-setting or printing (and therefore when spelling text out orally), the exclamation mark is called a screamer or bang.
The symbol is believed to originate from the Latin word io, an exclamation of joy. It was formed either as a digraph of the letters i and o, or as the letter i (for io) above a full stop.
Frequent use of the exclamation mark is common in writing by teenagers and in advertising. Some brands cleverly, but confusingly, contain an exclamation mark, e.g. "Yahoo!". Some comic books, especially superhero comics of the mid-20th century, routinely use the exclamation mark instead of the period. Overuse of the exclamation mark is generally considered poor writing, since it distracts the reader.
The town of Westward Ho! in England – after which the novel by Charles Kingsley is named – is the only place name in Britain that officially contains an exclamation mark. There is also a town in Quebec called Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, which officially contains not one but two exclamation marks in its name. The titles of several musical comedies such as Oklahoma! and Oh! Calcutta! also contain exclamation marks.
In some languages, most notably Spanish, a sentence ending in an exclamation mark must also begin with an inverted exclamation mark (the same applies to the question mark, too):
- ¿Estás loco? ¡La mataste!
See also: question mark, full stop, interrobang
In Khoi and San and IPA the exclamation point is used as a letter to indicate the retroflex click sound represented as q in Zulu orthography. In Unicode this letter is properly coded as U+01C3 (ǃ) and distinguished from the common punctuation symbol U+0021 (!) to allow software to deal properly with word breaks.
In computer programming, the exclamation mark corresponds to Unicode and ASCII character 33, or 0x0021.
Several computer languages use "!" for a variety of special meanings, most importantly, logical negation, e.g. A != B means "A is not equal to B." In this context, the exclamation is named the bang character. Other programmers call it a shriek, and in the BBC Basic programming language it is called a pling and is used to reference a 32-bit word.
See also: shebang
In mathematics the symbol represents the factorial operation. "n!" means "the product of the integers from 1 to n". For example, 4! (read four factorial) is 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 24. To avoid problems in some sums involving factorials 0! = 1
In the Geek Code, "!" is used before a letter to denote that the geek stubbornly refuses to participate in the topic at hand.
In chess notation "!" denotes a good move and "!!" an excellent move.
da:Udråbstegn
de:Ausrufezeichen
et:Hüüumärk
nl:Uitroepteken
pl:Wykrzyknik
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