SBox sets are for beginners. The fine art of complex statements, as the reader learns from Florence Hazrat's charming book about the history of the exclamation mark, lies in punctuation. More precisely, in the correct use of the shrill and symmetrical straight line with a dot hanging underneath.
Punctuation marks the tone of a sentence. Thanks to the punctus exclamativus or punctus admirativus, the exclamatory or astonishment mark, as it was called until the nineteenth century, we know that we are reading a decisive statement, an instruction or an admission intended to express wonder. It does not serve as a short respite like the flexible semicolon, nor is it hesitant like the indecisive question mark. As a less than subtle end to a sentence, it is particularly suitable for a concern that is rarely associated with punctuation: concentrating on the big feeling.
When the exclamation point was created by an Italian poet in the mid-fourteenth century from a combination of comma and period, a “naughty little textual earring” quickly transformed into a “new affective sign.” When language became a science in the eighteenth century, the exclamation mark, according to a contemporary, “marked the voice of nature when it shows itself agitated, amazed and moved.” His natural habitat is poetry, perhaps drama, rarely scientific treatises.
In the 1960s there were still typewriters without the corresponding key
It may sound niche, but Hazrat's “rebellious story” looks to a venerable tradition of the history of ideas. Small forms have been popular in science for several years. By looking at the physical reality of immaterial thoughts, studies of annotations, marginalia, or punctuation, at their best, examine the larger world in small characters.
Such easily overlooked elements organize the page like the flow of reading. They embody the writing and thinking style of a time and reveal personal preferences and collective taste judgments. Footnotes, the American historian Anthony Grafton wrote in his history of them, are stable systems only for the uninitiated. Instead, the connoisseur sees an anthill full of scurrying, arguing microelements.
The same applies to the exclamation mark. Its pathetic power, which is so well suited to advertising and propaganda, repeatedly attracted attention from minimalist-oriented opponents. Guides for good style recommend sparing use. It is the “typographical equivalent of junk food,” a sign of a confused mind. It didn't suit the master of the short story Hemingway any more than it suited the existentialist Camus. Adorno found it authoritarian. Tom Wolfe, on the other hand, author of “Purgatory of the Vanities” from 1987 and a famous representative of subjectively condensed journalism, was a passionate fan. People don’t think in essays, he said, “they add one exclamation point after another.” Pop art like comics would be a lot poorer aesthetically without “Whoa!”, “Boom!!,” “Whoosh!!!”
“En Marche!”, “Make America Great Again!”, “We can do it!”
The book by the Berlin-based German-Iranian author offers many such cultural-historical insights, but is strongest in its editorial-historical passages. Although there may be individual preferences when it comes to punctuation, before the idea of the immutable work took hold in the twentieth century, spelling and punctuation were far from the author's control. A sixteenth-century printer only had a ! in the typesetting box if the foundry provided it. Jane Austen's novels, famous for their cleverly controlled rhythm, have been re-punctuated by one of her publisher's employees. In the 1960s there were still typewriters without a corresponding key.
And how should we deal with the medieval long poem “Beowulf” today, whose translation from Old English seems to require punctuation marks that did not exist when it was written? A seemingly typical style is often the result of the many hands a manuscript passes through.
This shows the expertise of the author, who researched and completed her doctorate on English literature of the Renaissance at the Universities of Cambridge and St. Andrews. Her explanations are detailed but written with a light hand. When it comes to typographical shenanigans, she is in her element. The later chapters, which unnecessarily lengthen the book, are less successful. There is a tour de force through political slogans, from “En Marche!” to “Make America Great Again!” to “We can do it!”, and a cursory overview of the exclamation point in the digital space. As expected, Donald Trump's particular preference for loud markings gets its own section, but, not least in the associated call to save the now contaminated sign, the earlier willingness to be ambivalent is missing. The ! is now also used here! instead of fighting with foil.
This proves the truth of the book at the end: finding a good ending is an art. But before that, we learned that the real masterpiece is a good end to a sentence.
Florence Hazrat: “The Exclamation Mark”. A rebellious story. Translated from English by Stephan Paul. HarperCollins Verlag, Hamburg 2024. 224 pages, illustrations, hardcover, €20.
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