How to Use This Blog

When you post, please start with a complete bibliographic citation for the item you are reviewing. Summarize the work in about 250 words, then analyze the item and synthesize how it fits in with other things you've read (here, in class, in other classes, or on your own). Finally add one or more keyword labels to help us organize the bibliography.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Pointed punctuation!

FORMAL REFERENCE:

Kendall, Nancy M. 2001. "Pointed punctuation!." Christian Science Monitor, May 10. 22. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 8, 2011).

RELEVANT SECTIONS: All


SUMMARY: This short article cites the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins and other reference materials to establish that in America, the exclamation mark is “used to indicate surprise or strong emotion.” She also quotes one Robert Hendrickson, a word expert, as saying that it has “few friends in history.” This confirms many other sources—for some reason, exclamation points are frowned upon by many.

The article also verifies Truss in that in early times exclamation marks were “notes of admiration, and that they were “
were considered weak attempts to draw attention to words that were not strong enough to make their point on their own. The mark was given the nod in small doses, though, for warnings and commands.”

New information is that Italians invented the mark through the Latin “io” written as an O with a slash through it, meaning “exclamation of joy.”


ASSESSMENT:

Christian Science Monitor isn’t a scholarly publication, but the references the author synthesized are good reference materials and Robert Hendrickson is vetted—he’s written things such as American Regionalisms.

The author of the article itself seems to be an English enthusiast who writes for the CSM, but I couldn’t verify her qualifications beyond that.


REFLECTION:

This is a good general historical overview of the punctuation mark, and it can be used as support for most of the other articles of similar purpose. I think the most original value is in the origins in Latin, and the reinforcement of the idea that exclamation marks have a bad rap.

KEYWORDS AND LABELS:

history, overview, exclamation mark, origins, dismissal

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