People have ~feelings~ about the exclamation point (Florence Hazrat interview)

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Mignon Fogarty, Inc.

Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

938. Love it or hate it, the exclamation point has been on the red carpet lately because we're using it more. But it also has a fascinating history: the man who invented it was trying to fix a problem that annoyed him. This interview with Florence Hazrat is bursting with fascinating tidbits.

Transcript

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0:00.0	MUSIC
0:05.0	Grammar Girl here. I'm Minyeon Fugherty and today I am here with Dr. Florence
0:09.8	Hazrat, author of this amazing book, an admirable point all about the
0:15.8	exclamation mark. There are the exclamation point. We'll get into that. Can you
0:19.8	imagine a whole book about the exclamation point? I loved it and I just can't
0:24.6	wait to talk to her about it today. Welcome Florence. Hi Minyeon, it's a great
0:29.7	talk to you today. Yes and you're coming to us all the way from Berlin too. So
0:34.3	thank you for doing that on the strange time zones we're doing here. I guess
0:40.1	before we I really want to talk about the history of the punctuation mark but
0:44.1	maybe just a tiny bit before that. What what compelled you to write an entire
0:49.2	book about the exclamation point? Well I think I can actually write a second
0:54.4	book because it's just the gift that keeps on giving and actually I'm writing a
0:57.9	whole sort of social history of punctuation at the moment. I was at
1:03.3	University I was researching brackets in Renaissance romance so that's text
1:08.7	about night traveling into forest being distracted by their main quest and
1:13.6	going elsewhere and I realized that all of those sort of aggressive narratives
1:19.0	had lots and lots of parentheses and I was wondering where do they actually come
1:23.6	from so I was looking at that and then I started to look at other kinds of
1:27.5	punctuation and it just became this this beast as you know we go through we go
1:32.6	down rabbit holes and and so I sort of came across a lot of negative press on
1:40.0	the exclamation mark with the exclamation point and I thought well that really
1:43.7	can't be the whole story there must be a reason why we're using it why we
	...

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