[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

[Andrew Gray]

[oops, accidentally sent it to Andre only. My apologies for the
duplicate - damn gmail!]

On 19/09/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually I think this one is a good advise for those writing Wikipedia
> - usage of exclamation marks often means that you are slipping towards
> POV. Alford's term "note of admiration" explains that well - we should
> not be noting that something is admirable, just tell the facts and
> have the reader decide whether they are admirable or down-to-earth.
> 
> Besides, using an exclamation mark in every second line, as some
> people tend to do, is in my opinion bad style in itself, even outside
> Wikipedia.

Not disagreeing with the style - this isn't the context for
exclamation marks at all. However, I think the point holds - the
language changes to the point that a very common piece of punctuation
*doesn't even have a recognisable term* a mere hundred and forty years
ago.

(Incidentally, http://www.issco.unige.ch/staff/clark/SprolacPaper.doc.pdf
has quite an amusing table - frequency counts of !, !!, !!!, !!!! &c
from Usenet.)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk