The other day I was having a heated argument with one of my imaginary daughters, the eldest, charming intelligent pretty but rebellious Ada, when I decided, out of nowhere, in classic parental fashion, that we were done: "You go to your room!" One exclamation point. Ada, always so dramatic, adds more, allegedly to amplify the effect: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Where does it end? Sometimes the exclamation point is paired with a question mark: "Argh, where'd you get all those exclamation points from!?" Didn't get them from me. It even comes conjoined with a question mark, what's called an interrobang. No one in our family uses it. Some roll their eyes at the very notion of using an exclamation point. Clearly I'm not one of them, though I try to be judicious. I can think of a few other ways this common punctuation mark has appeared in print. One of them, in case you haven't noticed, is when it's enclosed alone within parentheses: (!) I've used it myself once somewhere among my column pieces. That's over now. I've encountered (!) one too many times. It's a playful way of expressing surprise midsentence (sigh) that officially doesn't come as a surprise anymore. To the next impish flourish! (Wait, HUH‽) Something like that.
