{"id":284,"date":"2009-02-16T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2009-02-16T08:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=284"},"modified":"2009-02-04T21:08:54","modified_gmt":"2009-02-05T05:08:54","slug":"how-to-pronounce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=284","title":{"rendered":"How to Pronounce “!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Behold the exclamation point! It’s a handy thing to have and use! It adds excitement to each and every sentence that you write! Over-using it is like reading a conversation with someone high on espresso and crack! Caution is advised! On the computer, however, the exclamation point means more than a frantic writing style!
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\nI subscribed to MAD Magazine<\/em> for years when I was a kid (back when it was good). MAD<\/em> was a great satirical rag, and inspired a lot of my humor that I’ve written since \u2014 including the original DOS For Dummies<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Upon reading MAD<\/em> one afternoon, I noticed that all the written text in the magazine, every sentence, ended in an exclamation point. In all the cartoon bubbles, not a single period. It turns out that was sort of a comic book tradition, but it began my long writing career with the exclamation point, or exclamation mark<\/em> as it’s often called.<\/p>\n

A former English teacher, who helped hone my early writing skills, cautioned me about using the exclamation point. “Don’t over do it,” she said. Because of my MAD<\/em> experience, I tended to end too many sentences with a ! and not a period. So I pulled back.<\/p>\n

When I got a computer, and learned to program, I noticed that the exclamation point was used more than just to mean something exciting. Due to the limited availability of characters on the keyboard, the ! became employed in a number of different ways. Mix that in with computer people eager to save valuable typing and speaking molecules and the term “exclamation point” became pass\u00e9.<\/p>\n

For example, back in the old ARPAnet days, the ! was used as a separator in an e-mail address. It was pronounced bang<\/em>. So my email address was once ...crash!dang<\/code>, which is pronounced, “crash bang dang.” Even today, many programmers will refer to the ! as a bang<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In programming, the ! is often used to mean “not,” as in !=<\/code>, which means “not equal” or the common !important<\/code>, which means “not important.”<\/p>\n

Here are some additional ! trivial bits:<\/p>\n