Seen a post in which a teacher found the use of exclamation mark confusing thus the birth of this entry.
The following info is extracted from Gordon Jarvie's book so that I suppose no one should doubt the credibility of the explanation provided.
Happy learning to all my fellow teachers.
The exclamation mark is used to signal an exclamation, or emphatic utterance and often suggests strong emotion. Sometimes, it implies a sentence that is not to be taken seriously. The utterances maybe complete or incomplete, single words or long sentences, as in:
Heavens above!
Not on your life!
Encore! Encore!
How dare you say a thing like that to me!
What an ass!
How lovely she looked!
Hail, Caesar!
Help!
Look out!
Two tendencies are to be avoided here. One is the gushing tendency - the addition of exclamation marks to ordinary statements, perhaps with the intention of artificially brightening up one's writing, as in :
It was lovely to see you all last week!
Your hospitality was much appreciated!
These two sentences should of course close with a full stop, and the exclamation marks might in fact be construed as a gratuitous form of ambiguity. Was it really lovely to see them all last week, one wonders? And was the hospitality perhaps on the meagre side.
More info on UPSR grammar & writing tips
Module English UPSR
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