Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Exclamation Points!

Episode Date: March 4, 2020

We all use them! But did we always? NO!! Learn all about everyone's favorite punctuation mark today! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.

There's Josh. This is short stuff with an exclamation point. I thought this was super interesting. I feel like we've talked about this before. Yeah. Do you remember on our little one minute explanation videos that have been scrubbed, I guess from the internet, because I don't know where those things are.

I don't know if I remember those. Yeah, we'd be like, we'd explain something to one another in one minute. Really? Just in standup videos, yeah. Yeah, I sorta do. We've done so many dumb videos over the years. I think the only thing that was worth anything

was don't be dumb. You're sweet. But also internet roundup was pretty great. And again, this day in history was wonderful. Yeah. Wonderful. Anyway, I think we talked about this, but it is super interesting and I love it.

Yeah, I think it's interesting because there's a lot of tendrils. We're talking about the exclamation point. And there are just lots of weird and interesting facts about this. Yeah. No one knows where it came from exactly. It was introduced in English as far back

as the 14th century, where it was called the point of admiration. That's pretty sweet. I like that. And the theory of what it, how it came about was that it was used for the Latin exclamation of joy, which is capital I, capital O. I-O.

And the I above that O looks like the exclamation point. Yeah. Like they think that somebody was using that and started just, I guess, saving space. I don't know. But instead of putting I then O is I above O. And yeah, that looks a lot like an exclamation point. Yeah.

They also think the question mark came from that too. Q-O, quo, to question somebody. Sure. That they just put the Q above the O and that's where that came from. It's pretty, Look at there. Pretty good explanation if you ask me.

Yeah. And so if you want to talk about like the actual rules of grammar, cause it's different than how we use it today, in some ways, you can also still use it this way, but is obviously an exclamation to exclaim something in a sentence or an interjection. Right. So like if you're like, I stubbed my toe. Yeah.

That would be an appropriate place to use an exclamation point without people making fun of you or saying like, Yee-haw. There you go. If you say that without an exclamation point, you just look kind of like a jerk. Your cowboy who's dead inside. Right, exactly.

So people kind of long understood, like these are the two instances that you could use an exclamation point and that was that. Everyone just knew like you just don't use it unless you are say like bad at writing. Like if you come across a book written in like the 20th century and there's a lot of exclamation points,

that book was roundly laughed at. Because one thing that you'll find if you start to dig into the history of exclamation points is we used to use them way less than you see today. They were used in the 19th century. I think yellow muckraker journalists used them a lot to kind of get people on the edge of their seat or whatever. It's kind of a poke.

It's like a, it's an emotional poke. And so it can get kind of worn out very quickly and it was. So people used them sparingly, starting around the 20th century. Yeah. And here's another super cool little fact. I'm an old typewriter in my room and I've never noticed but there is not an exclamation point because up until about 1970,

they didn't have its own key as a punctuation mark. Sure. You had to retrofit it. Yeah. I didn't know how to make one. And this is pretty interesting, isn't it? Yeah. So what you do is you type a period. Step one. You backspace. Step two. And then you type an apostrophe on top of it.

And that would be the third and final step. Yeah. Not bad. It's a good little solve. But your exclamation point looks a little like lazy or crooked. Yeah. Agreed. You know, I guess it gets the point across. I mean, you could, if you wanted to try and get tricky, you could roll the thing down a little bit and try and type an L, I suppose.

Sure. But that's your really gambling there. Yeah. But think about the trouble that people went to to type an exclamation point back then. Like you really needed to mean it. Yeah. That's true. You know? Like wanted. Exactly.

So back in the day, apparently they didn't call them exclamation points. As recently as the 50s, Chuck, they called them bangs. Yeah. And that's a longstanding tradition. And I think in the 19th century, printers, like where they actually spelled out like each letter of every word in a newspaper, they called them bangs back then. Pretty cool.

It is pretty cool. You want to take a break? Yeah. We'll take a break and talk about how things have changed. Exclamation on the podcast. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show. Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use a dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. OK, Chuck, we're back. It's kind of funny, if you listen to this episode

and just imagine an exclamation point at the end of every one of our sentences, I'll bet it'd be a little more enjoyable than normal. Yeah, I mean, surely we'll call it something, exclamation point, and use an exclamation point. I don't know. I don't know, we could also zig instead of zagging. That's true.

Go for the subtle joke. So if you are aware of the world today, in the West, at least, you are aware that exclamation points are everywhere. They're dripping from the ceilings, the walls. They're in your cereal everywhere. There's exclamation points. And this is a fairly new thing. And for a little while, especially when it really

started to take hold in, say, like the odds, the 2000 odds, people made fun of these. I remember distinctly writing a blog post saying, like, this is ruining the world, basically, this overuse of the exclamation point. I was. Now, and I warned against this in my blog post, now you can't not use an exclamation point

or else you seem like you're being mean. That was the ultimate problem that I foresaw way back in the day. Yeah, so that is what has changed everything, is ecommunication. And there's a linguist named Gretchen McCullough, who really very succinctly ties a bow on exactly what this is. And that is this.

It is a sincerity marker, not an intensity marker now. Yeah, which makes a tremendous amount of sense. Yeah, I mean, it can be both. You can still obviously say, get out of my way, exclamation point. Sure. But if you're communicating with someone via text, via email, and you say, thanks a lot for helping,

if you'd say, thanks a lot for helping, with just a period, it comes across as not too friendly. It just does now. It does. And it's sad because there's a very cool way of putting it that's not excited or anything like that. And if you, I feel like we've also gotten a lot more insecure at the same time.

We've started to use electronic communication. And so that those two have kind of cohabitated or coexisted or co-evolved. And we now require that exclamation point to say, I mean this, like I'm being serious. Yeah. Which, because when we communicate electronically, email, chat, text, what have you, we're missing like all of the verbal,

the audio, and the visual cues that come through when you're talking to somebody or you can hear someone talking or see them talking. So we have to kind of adorn our communication now with these other cues to let people know like, I'm not being sarcastic. Which makes people who use exclamation points sarcastically, they are basically undermining

the very fabric of the new society that we're building. Like we're holding on by our fingernails on this new system. Right. It's like, please don't pull the rug out from under us. Like give it another 50 years maybe before you really start doing that. But it is an interesting thing with the sarcasm or genuine quality, and that's the differentiator.

Like if someone gives you a lot of help, you could say, thank you so much exclamation point. If someone doesn't really help you that much, you could also say, thank you so much. Right. And like you can hear my voice and clearly know what's going on. But in an email or a text, that period is a signifier, I think.

It's a message. Yeah, it is. It is. So exactly how you take it, I think largely depends on the type of person you are. But I think what Gretchen McCullis said was, it's a, sincerity marker. Sincerity marker, beautiful, over an intensity marker.

The other thing too is that they have found through research that women use them more than men if you're communicating online to show friendliness. And they've also found that young women and people of color, young people of color especially, are linguistic innovators. They're often vilified in the early processes. And one thing they mentioned in this House of Works article

is like Valley Girl speech, where as people say like all the time now, some people point it out and make fun of it. And I guarantee you those people use it all the time too. But that stuff was really derided in the 80s, but now it's kind of widespread in a lot of ways. Yeah, remember I think it was Moon Unit, Frank Zepa's daughter? Yes. OK, remember she had that song Valley Girl that hit,

making fun of Valley Girls. And like the whole world was making fun of Valley Girls. And now everyone talks like a Valley Girl. To a certain degree, that is true, I think. So the idea behind this, according to linguists, is that starting about in the 2000 aughts, again, 2005, 6, 7, around the time when texting really became a big thing in America, younger women

started using exclamation points a lot. And it just became an innovation that spilled over into the rest of culture. Yeah, and there are a couple of other theories that it says a lot in a short amount of time. And people are communicating so quickly these days in shorter bursts that it kind of plays a valuable role, which makes sense.

It does, because if you add an exclamation point, it keeps you from having to say like, and I couldn't believe it. I really meant it, or I was very surprised. Yeah, it says it all right there. Yeah, for sure. The other interesting thing too is that they've done studies, and they have shown that if you use exclamation points

in the business setting, that it is more likely that you are not a supervisor or hire. Or perceives as such. Right, and that is true, man. When I think about like our bosses, they don't use a lot of exclamation points. That's for the kids. Yeah, narrowing an exclamation point among them.

There is one person that I won't name on the air in our company that we exchange emails with that does the like two or three exclamation points. Oh, I haven't noticed, I'll have to pay attention. Don't tell me. Okay. I'm gonna see if I can figure it out. I'll email you in the next few days about it.

I always draw the line with one, and I try to use them as very much as sincerity markers to display that I'm either genuine about something or sincere about something. Anything I don't do to, you don't use them much at all, I've noticed. I use them, but I've very frequently gone back and read an email before I sent it

and removed an exclamation point and replaced it with a period. Not because I was coming, I meant to like tone down my sincerity or anything like that, but because I don't wanna overuse them so that it does mean something or that it does come through clearly when I do use them.

Right, and tying into this, the other kind of interesting thing, how these sort of, it's not really grammar, but how these things evolve over the years is the all caps thing. It now means like you're yelling at somebody, and it's always funny to see in some sort of thread

or forum where there are, maybe people of a certain age accidentally get that caps lock going, and it just is like this angry old person is just yelling at everybody. That's right, it is, it's funny. They don't mean it, they just didn't know how to turn it off.

Yes, and if you have all caps and multiple explanations, you're either super excited or really ticked off. Yeah, so Chuck, I have to ask you something. Because I don't use exclamation points from an outsider perspective, does it seem like I'm being tepid or cold or a jerk or mean? No, I mean, you and I communicate in as short a hand as possible at this point.

Yeah, yeah, but you're CC'd on just about every email at work. I mean, like to other people? Yeah, so to other people does it, how does it look? I think managerial and refined. Oh, that's exactly what I'm going for. Nice work. I have a computer monocle that I wear when I send emails, so that's what I'm trying to get across.

Yeah, you're doing fine, don't worry. Thanks, managerial and refined, serviceable and workman-like. Yes. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I don't either, so that means that short stuff is away. Stuff you should know is a production

of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.