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Short Stuff: Exclamation Points! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: there's Josh. This is short stuff with an exclamation point.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I thought this was super interesting. I feel like we've
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: talked about this before. Do you remember on our our
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: little one minute explanation videos that have been scrubbed? I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: guess from the internet because I don't know where those
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: things are. I don't know if I remember those. Yeah,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: we'd be like we'd explained something to one another in
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: one minute too soon. Stand up videos, Yeah, I sort
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: of do. We've done so many dumb videos over the years.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I think the only thing that was worth anything was
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: don't be dumb, You're sweet. But also Internet Roundup was
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: pretty great, and again this day in history was wonderful. Wonderful. Anyway,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I think we talked about this, but it is super
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: interesting and I love it. Yeah. I think it's interesting
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot of ten drils. We're talking about
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the exclamation point, and there are just lots of weird
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and interesting facts about this. Uh. No one knows where
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: it came from exactly. It was introduced in English as
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: far back as the fourteenth century, where it's called the
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: point of admiration, that's pretty sweet. I like that. And
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the theory of what it how it came about was
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: that it was used for the Latin exclamation of joy,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: which was capital I, capital oh I oh and I
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: above that Oh looks like the exclamation point. Yeah. Like
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: they think that somebody was using that and started just
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I guess saving space, I don't know, but instead of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: putting I than oh as I above oh and yeah,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: that looks a lot like an exclamation point. Yeah. They
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: also think the question mark came from that to q
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: o quo to question somebody, that they just put the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: que above the oh, and that's where that came from.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It's pretty pretty good explanation if you ask me. Yeah.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: And so if you want to talk about like the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: actual rules of grammar, because it's different than how we
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: use it today in some ways, you can also still
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: use it this way. But is is obviously an exclamation
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: to exclaim something in a sentence or an interjection, right, So,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: like if you're like, um, I stubbed my toe, that
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: would be an appropriate place to use an exclamation point
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: without people making fun of you or saying like, um,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: there you go. If you say that without an exclamation point,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: you just look kind of like a jerk, a cowboy
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: who's dead inside, right, exactly. So people kind of long
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: understood like these are the two instances that you could
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: use an exclamation point, and that was that, Um, everyone
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: just knew, like you just don't use it unless you are, say,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: like bad at writing. Like if you come across a
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: book written in like the twentieth century and there's a
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: lot of exclamation points, that book was roundly laughed at.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Because one thing that you will find if you start
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to dig into the history of exclamation points is we
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: used to use them way less than you see today.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: And they were used in the nineteenth tree. I think
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: yellow muckraker journalists used them a lot to kind of
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: get people on the edge of their seat or whatever. Um,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: it's kind of a poke. It's like a it's an
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: emotional poke, and so it can get kind of worn
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: out very quickly. And it was so people used them sparingly, um,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: starting around the twentieth century. Yeah, and here's another super
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: cool little fact. I'm an old typewriter in my room
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and I've never noticed, but there is not an exclamation point,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: because up until about nineteen seventy they didn't have. It
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: didn't have its own key as a as a punctuation mark.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: You had to retrofit it. Yeah, I didn't know how
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: to make one, um, and this is pretty interesting in it. Yeah.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So what you do is you type a period, step one,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: backspace two, and then you type an apostrophe on top
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  Speaker 1: of it, and that would be the third and final step. Yeah.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Not bad. It's a good little solve. But your your
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  Speaker 1: exclamation point looks a little like lazy or crooked. Yeah, agreed,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: you know, I guess it gets the point across. I mean,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: you could you wanted to try and get tricky, you
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: could roll the thing down a little bit and try
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and type an L. I suppose, sure, But that's you're
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: really gambling there. Yeah, but think about the trouble that
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: people went to type an exclamation point back then, Like
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: you really needed to mean it, that's true, you know,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: like wanted exactly so um back in the day. Apparently
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  Speaker 1: they didn't call them exclamation points as recently as the fifties, Chuck,
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  Speaker 1: They called them bangs. And that's a longstanding tradition. I
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  Speaker 1: think in the nineteenth century, um printers like where they
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: actually spelled out like each letter of every word in
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: a newspaper. They called them bangs back then. Pretty cool,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: It is pretty cool. You want to take a break, Yeah,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: we'll take a break and talk about how things have changed.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Exclamation as sk should Okay, Chuck, we're back. It's kind
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: of funny if you listen to this episode and just
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: imagine an exclamation point at the end of every one
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: of our sentences. I'll bet it be a little more
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: enjoyable than normal. Yeah, I mean, surely we'll call it
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: something exclamation point and use an exclamation point. I don't know.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know. We could also zig instead of zagging,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: go for the subtle joke. So, if you are aware
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: of the world today in the West at least, um,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: you are aware that exclamation points are everywhere. They're dripping
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: from the ceilings, the walls, They're in your um, your cereal.
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  Speaker 1: Everywhere there's exclamation points. And this is a fairly new thing.
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  Speaker 1: And for a little while, especially when it really started
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: to take hold and say, like the odds the two
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: thousand odds, people made fun of these. I remember distinctly
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: writing a blog post saying like this is ruining the
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: war old basically, you're a I was um. Now, and
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: I warned against this in my blog post. Now you
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: can't not use an exclamation point or else you seem
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: like you're being mean. That was the ultimate problem that
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I foresaw way back in the day. Yeah, so that
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: that is what has changed. Everything is ecommunication. Uh. And
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: there's a linguist named Gretchen McCullough who really, very sustinctly
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: ties a bow on exactly what this is, and that
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: is this it isn't It is a sincerity marker, not
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: an intensity marker. Now, yeah, which makes a tremendous amount
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: of sense. Yeah, I mean it can be both. You
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: can still obviously say get out of my way exclamation point.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: But if you're communicating with someone via text via email
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: and you say, you know, thanks a lot for helping,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: if you'd say thanks a lot for helping with just
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: a period, it comes across as not too friendly. It
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: just does. Now, it does. And it's sad because there's
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: a very cool way of putting it that's not excited
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. And if you I feel like
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: we've also gotten a lot more insecure. At the same
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: time we started to use electronic communication, and so that
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: those two have kind of cohabitated or coexisted or co evolved,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: and we now require that exclamation point to say to
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: say I mean this, like I'm being serious. Yeah, which
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: because when we communicate electronically, email, chat, text, what have you, um,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: we're missing like all of the verbal, the audio, and
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the visual cues that come through when you're talking to
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: somebody or you can hear someone talking or see them talking.
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  Speaker 1: So we have to kind of adorn our communication now
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  Speaker 1: with these other cues to let people know like I'm
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: not being sarcastic, which makes people who use exclamation points sarcastically.
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  Speaker 1: They are basically undermining the very fabric of the new
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  Speaker 1: society that we're building, Like we're holding on by our
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: fingernails on this new system, like please don't pull the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: rug out from unders, you know, like give it another
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: fifty years maybe before you really start doing that. But
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  Speaker 1: it is an interesting thing with the sarcasm or genuine quality,
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  Speaker 1: and that's the differentiator. Like if someone gives you a
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: lot of help, you could say thank you so much
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  Speaker 1: exclamation point. If someone doesn't really help you that much,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: you could also say thank you so much, and like
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  Speaker 1: you can hear my voice and clearly know what's going on.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: But in an email or a text, that period is
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: a signifier. I think it's a message. Yeah, it is.
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  Speaker 1: It is so exactly how you take it, I think
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  Speaker 1: largely depends on the type of person you are. But
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  Speaker 1: I think what Gretchen mccullus said was, it's a it's
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  Speaker 1: a um sincerity mark, sincerity marker, beautiful over an intensity marker.
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  Speaker 1: The other thing, too, is that they have found through
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  Speaker 1: research that women use them more than men. Uh, if
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  Speaker 1: you're communicating online to show friendliness. And they've also found
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: that young women and people of color, young people of
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  Speaker 1: color especially are linguistic innovators. They are often vilified in
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the early processes. Uh. And one thing they mentioned in
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: this House Stuff Works articles is like Valley Girl speech,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: where as people say like all the time. Now some
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: people pointed out and make fun of it, and I
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: guarantee of those people use it all the time too.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: But uh, that stuff was really derided in the eighties,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: but now it's kind of widespread in a lot of ways. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I remember, I think it was it was his Moon Unit,
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  Speaker 1: Frank Zappa's daughter. Okay, remember she had that song Valley
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  Speaker 1: Girl that hit making fun of valley girls, and like
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  Speaker 1: the whole world was making fun of value girls and
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: now everyone talks like a valley girl to a certain degree,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: that is true, I think. So. The idea behind this,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: according to linguists UM, is that starting about in the
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  Speaker 1: two thousand odds again two thousand five, six seven, and
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  Speaker 1: around the time when texting really became a big thing
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  Speaker 1: in America, UM, younger UH women started using exclamation points
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  Speaker 1: a lot, and it just became a an innovation that
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: spilled over into the rest of culture. Yeah. And there
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: are a couple of other theories that it It says
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  Speaker 1: a lot in a short amount of time, and people
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: are communicating so quickly these days and shorter bursts, that
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: it kind of plays a valuable role, which it really
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: it does because if you if you add an exclamation point,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: it keeps you from having to say like and I
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: couldn't believe it, Are I really meant it? Or I
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: was very surprised. Yeah, it says it all right there,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. Um. The other interesting thing too, is
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: that they've done UH studies and they have shown that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: if you use exclamation points in the business setting, that
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: it is more likely that you're not a supervisor or
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: hire or perceived as such. Right, and that is true. Man,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: when I think about like our bosses think there's a
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: lot of exclamation points. That's for the kids. Yeah, nary
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: an exclamation point among them. There is one person that
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I won't name on the air in our company that
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: we exchange emails with that does the like two or
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: three exclamation points. Oh, I have a notice, I'll have
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: to pay attention. Don't tell me. Okay, okay, I'm gonna
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: see if I can figure it out. I'll email you
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: in the next few days about it. I always draw
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the line with one, and I tried to use them
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: as very much as sincerity markers to display that, like
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're genuine about something or sincere about something
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: anything I don't do too. You don't use them much
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: at all. I've noticed I use them, but I will.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: I have very frequently gone back and read an email
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: for I sent it and removed an exclamation point, replaced
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: it with the period. Not because I was coming on
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't mind to like toned down my sincerity or
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: anything like that, but because I don't want to over
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: use them so that it does mean something or that
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: does come through clearly when I do use them, right, uh,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: And tying into this the other kind of interesting thing
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: how these um sort of it's not really grammar, but
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: how these things evolve over the years. Is the all
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: caps thing now means like you're yelling at somebody. And
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: it's always funny to see in some sort of thread
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: or forum where there maybe people of a certain age
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: accidentally get that caps lot going right, and it just
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: is like this angry old person it's just yelling at everybody.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: That's right, it is. It's funny that they don't mean that,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: they just didn't know how to turn it off. Yes,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: And if you have all caps and multiple explanations, you're
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: either super excited are really ticked off. Yeah. Um, so, Chuck,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: I have to ask you something because I don't use
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: exclamation points. From an outsider perspective, does it seem like
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I'm being tepid or cold or a jerk or mean? No,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I mean you and I communicate and as short a
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: hand as possible at this point. Yeah. Yeah, but like
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: you're you're see seed on just about every email at
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: work to other people. Yeah, so to other people, doesn't
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: how does it look? I think managerial and refined. Oh,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what I'm going for. I have a computer
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: monocle that I wear when I send emails so that
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: it comes through. That's what I'm trying to get across. Yeah,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: you're doing fine, don't worry. Thanks, managerial, in, serviceable and
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: workman like. Oh you got anything else? I got nothing else?
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I don't either, So that means that short stuff is away.
• 13:28
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