In a recent interview over our dining room table, Ellen Susan revealed, exclusively to me, her latest epiphany: The obvious need for a new punctuation mark.
The underlying problem is of course overuse of the traditional exclamation mark in the email/social network era, to the extent that the meaning of this venerable symbol has been severely undermined. I can recall coming across advice when I was in college in the late 1980s suggesting that it was permissible to use an exclamation mark once every twenty years or so. Today I probably type one every twenty minutes. I’m not doing so in published work, naturally, but rather in email: “Thanks!” “Congrats!” “See you soon!” It’s not just me. Even as I was writing this paragraph, I got a note from a highly erudite editor of a widely respected literary/cultural journal: “You are too kind!”
I actually hadn’t been kind to any excitable-making extent in the missive he was responding to. But we both knew that. Consider a non-exclamation-point version of my correspondent’s message: “You are too kind.” That reads dry, chilly, possibly even sarcastic. Which suggests how the function of the exclamation mark has changed: It no longer connotes remarkable enthusiasm; it just signals a sort of general friendliness and baseline cheer, the equivalent of saying “Howyadoin?” in a chipper voice.
This is precisely why, as Ellen argues, we need a new punctuation mark that resides in the emotional range between the just-the-facts period and the whoop-to-do excitability of the exclamation point. While the new mark would clearly signal positivity, it would save us from communicating with the unhinged emotionality of a note slipped between junior-high students.
So having spotted this need, Ellen promptly designed a new mark herself. She calls her proposed solution an ElRey Mark. This refers to the name of our former dog, a highly dignified chow who was a master at communicating feeling with graceful understatement. Using the Spanish words for “the king” also suggests that an ElRey connotes comfortable mastery of protocol and politesse, intertwined with a steadfast refusal to raise one’s voice unless something is on fire. Visually, it borrows the Spanish-language double-deployment of ¡exclamation! marks, but combines the two symbols to suggest roughly half the level of exclaiming: precisely the new measurement we need.
The most difficult aspect of E’s suggestion — creating an entirely new mark that would have to be adapted into every font in existence and every keyboard hereinafter devised — is also my favorite aspect. There are endless of examples of small-bore meaning-hacks applied to existing characters in the digital-writing era: @, #, emoticons in general, etc. But surely the massive underlying shift in textual communication that we’ve lately experienced deserves to be memorialized in some more definitive way than those examples. And I can’t think of a more genuinely useful addition to the way we punctuate now than the ElRey. I wish I could use one to end this sentence, but I can’t — yet!
Comments [20]
Let unbridled semi-enthusiastic communication begin .–.
02.12.13
10:08
And very neatly designed: love the tapering nature of the mark in the middle, Please let it catch on.-.
02.12.13
02:35
[bullet n-dash bullet]
Unless you feel that the bullets make too bold of a punctuation mark for the more half-hearted enthusiasm you seek to express...
02.12.13
03:42
02.12.13
04:45
Maybe the new mark can mean sincerity without the energy.
02.12.13
05:49
02.12.13
06:49
Like this|
02.13.13
09:04
02.13.13
02:09
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interobang
I'd prefer to see the interrobang added to the regular keyboard; I find the need to express incredulity far more often than I have the need to express friendliness.
02.13.13
02:23
Like this|
I think the broken bar ¦ might be more distinguishable and apt.
By the way, does anyone know why, at least on UK QWERTY keyboards, the ¦ and | give each others' symbols? I'll give that a quick google....
02.13.13
07:13
Tail wagging anyone?
Perhaps we should try a little Banana Joe tail wagging by moving our quote marks around the exclamation point.
Banana Joe “!”
02.13.13
07:59
Good one. I think that wins the sideways contenders, hands down.
Regarding the interrobang, it appears that you can paste that one: ‽
(even if you can't type it) also... "On Mac OS X, it is found on the Character Palette, obtained by pressing the key combination ⌘ Cmd+⌥ Opt+T."
02.14.13
10:17
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1ecb/index.htm
U+1ECB
ị
02.14.13
05:49
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1ecb/index.htm
U+1ECB
ị"
I find it a little difficult to realize it's a punctuation mark when it's used in a sentenceị
See?
02.15.13
01:42
Something like this.
Or this.|.
Or maybe just this.|
02.15.13
02:55
That said, perhaps we can borrow from Spanish and use the two exclamation points, but in adjacent fashion. Like this:
Shouting!¡
Or perhaps something that borrows from math, and denotes that it's an exclamation to a higher power:
Shouting!^
02.15.13
08:19
Regarding the interobang: I had completely forgotten about that, but I do love the name.
Anyway, love all the back and forth here. Thanks all ... rw
02.17.13
04:47
http://boingboing.net/2013/02/13/proposal-for-a-new-punctuation.html
02.18.13
01:01
12.31.13
03:47
There's also the option of allowing text-speak to exist as its own, self-evolving language, and accept the ! as the demarcation of friendliness that it's become. After all, the way I've come to truly designate exclamation is with all-caps, repetition of letters, and ironic misspelling; i.e., OMGGGG LOLOLOLOLOL YISSS.
I'd like to see the editor of a lit journal use one of those. Hehe.
Of course, that also brings up the question/concern (‽) of continued escalation, and an imagined future where OMG and LOL are the designators of friendliness, and true exclamation is just calling someone on facetime and screaming bloody murder...
01.16.14
05:52