The government has a lot to think about: the European Union referendum, high-speed rail, immigration, the economy, Trident and the constant danger that Labour MPs might oust Jeremy Corbyn and offer a real opponent. So it’s a surprise that ministers have found time to draw up a policy on the exclamation mark.
Nick Gibb, the schools minister, has released guidelines about the way seven-year-olds should exclaim. “An exclamation is required to start with What or How,” he says. That will come as a terrible blow to seven-year-olds who live in Devon’s Westward Ho! If Mr Gibb is not careful he will go down in history as the King Canute of punctuation, vainly struggling to hold back a tide of dots and perpendicular dashes.
Children should know the rules, but they should also understand the way punctuation can make an impact when those rules are broken. The Quebec town of Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! wouldn’t be quite the same if Mr Gibb had his way, and would anybody have heard of Hamilton, Ohio, had it not briefly changed its name to (shield your eyes, minister) Hamilton!? Today’s exclamation mark does not merely exclaim. In the digital age it can make a message seem more informal. In fact, the main objection to the exclamation mark is now its overuse.
So never employ more than one exclamation mark, and remember what the author Terry Pratchett said about a character who used five of them: “A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.”As Mr Gibb would never put it: not a good look!