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Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 59: Fifty Nine?!?

Is there a word for when you end a sentence with more than one question mark or exclamation point?

Is there?!?!

If you end a sentence with more than one period, it becomes an ellipsis.  I understand that an ellipsis is generally thought of as three dots, but I've known people who use as little as two & have seen sentences end with four or more.  I'm an old-fashioned three dot ellipsis kind of guy myself.  Anyway, I'm not talking about ellipses.  I promise...

At the radio station I just left, one of the fellows who does promotions loves to double up his exclamation points.  I would link to a page but it probably won't still be there after some time so let me get a screen shot.  I haven't seen this, I just know it's going to be there.

Yup:


Seven sentences in the copy (not counting the header).  Five end with double exclamation points, one surprisingly has only one (what did Cynthia ever do to KNON?), & one (the only imperative sentence) rates a period.

For me, I prefer three or more exclamation points to indicate boundless excitement & three or more questions marks to demonstrate serious confusion.  But my favorite is the mixture of exclamation points & question marks that I asked about at the beginning of this post.

If there's a name for it, I wanna know.  I love using it in combinations like:

This one?!?
Or this one!?!
Or some version of this one!?!?
But never ever like this!!??
Or this??!!
That doesn't make any sense.

Nor does anything I've written here.  What does any of this have to do with indiepop?!?!

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