Yes, you read that right; my exclamation mark key is broken. It mystifies me. I can type 1 all I like, but if I hold shift I get nothing. Not an exclamation mark, not any other character, not some ...

But it wasn’t until 1970 that the exclamation point had its own key on the keyboard. Before that, you had to type a period, and then use the backspace to go back and stick an apostrophe above it.

The Sunday Magazine18:33Word Processing: The exclamation mark has a rich history! And it deserves more respect! The exclamation mark has arguably seen better days. The explosion of emojis on ...

Then, in 1966, French author Hervé Bazin proposed his irony mark, which looks a bit like an exclamation point with a lowercase u through the middle , in his book, Plumons l’Oiseau, along with ...

An exclamation mark is used to show when something is surprising or forceful. Find out more in this Bitesize Primary KS1 English guide.