EXCLAMATION POINT.
Rule I. Strong Emotion.—The exclamation point is used after expressions denoting strong emotion.
EXAMPLES.
“Discipline of mind! say rather starvation, confinement, torture, annihilation.”—Macaulay.
“My valor is certainly going! it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my hands.”—Sheridan.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!”—Shakespeare.
REMARK.
To express an unusual degree of emotion, more than one exclamation point may be used.
Rule II. Interjections.—All interjections except O may be followed by an exclamation point.
EXAMPLES.
“But, alas! to make me
The fixed figure of the time, for scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at.”—Shakespeare.
“Oh! blessed temper, whose unclouded ray
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day.”—Pope.
“O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!”—Shakespeare.
REMARKS.
1. When the connection between the interjection and what follows is very close, it is sometimes better to put the exclamation point at the end of the sentence; as,—
“Oh for that ancient spirit
Which curbed the Senate’s will!”—Macaulay.
2. When it is desirable to express strong feeling through-out an entire sentence, the exclamation point should be placed at the end; as,—
“Ho, trumpets, sound a war-note!
Ho, lictors, clear the way!”—Macaulay.
Rule III. Address.—Expressions of address, when emphatic, may be followed by an exclamation point.
EXAMPLES.
“Lord! what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music [music of the nightingale] on earth.”—Izaak Walton.
“Hail, candle-light! without disparagement to sun or moon, the kindest luminary of the three.”—Lamb.
“Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.”—Goldsmith.
“Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy.”—Byron.