How to Exclaim!
October 13, 2023 at 08:30PMThe exclamation point: Ernest Hemmingway wasn’t a fan. But Salman Rushdie loves to exclaim! Who is right? Florence Hazrat points out that in this digital age, the exclamation point has become “the textual version of junk food.” Overused, aggressively used, used in repetition. But Hazrat is here to plead the case for the line and dot, giving us five wonderful ways “literature can recuperate the abused exclamation point.” So go forth and express!
Punctuation functions as the inky semaphore of the sentence. It tells our eyes where to linger, our minds to assimilate, and our breath to pause, catch itself, and propel the voice forward, whether that one in our heads or mouths. Punctuation is body, and no mark more than the exclamation point. As the period explodes its head, mushrooming into a !, so does the exclamation erupt from our diaphragms, pushing its way through our vocal cords into the ambient air.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2023/10/13/how-to-exclaim/
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