Back in the day we had to walk uphill in the snow to school then walk uphill to go back home...okay,maybe we didn't have it quite that bad and in most ways life was better,simpler and probably cleaner but for those who took typing class before 1970 you may recall that in order to type an exclamation point a person had to type a period (.) then backspace to put an apostrophe (') above it so it was pretty much a pain in the butt to use. That made a big difference to people who had to type up works by people who were addicted to ! overuse as it was a time consuming operation. Oddly enough the origin of the ! isn't really known though it is possibly from Latin (io) meaning joy. Even with the modern keyboards sporting an ! for you to use as you see fit the arguments still rage on over when and how often it should be used. When the ! was dictated it was called a "bang" and was also known in the printing world as "a screamer,a gasper,a startler,and a dog's cock".
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