Have you ever read something like this, Wow!!!1 or OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1? Were you in any any concerned about the momentary lack of attention that led the author to release the shift key before the 1? If your answer to this question is no, then you may want to pop back tomorrow when this post is making its merry way to the archives…
As for the rest of you, well, you may occasionally find yourself wondering if the world is really so frantic that persons could credibly not have the time to skip back and correct such a simple error. Once they’ve had done with it, I would further appreciate the removal of the superfluity of exclamation marks too. As anyone who has written or read a great deal knows, one can only exclaim so much before the exclamations are robbed of their potency. Even for teenagers three should be an absolute maximum!
Once the exclamation marks have been reduced or perhaps removed entirely we can then progress to the more substantial point. Using terms more descriptive and useful than wow, or at least less offensive than OMG. At the outset I should like to be clear that OMG is not a word, it is an initialism that is fast becoming popular enough to warrant entry into some of the more accurate dictionaries. Yes, dictionaries are descriptive rather than prescriptive. Not always a good thing.
Back to the point. I found myself wondering today if everyone in the world find themselves making small silly mistakes. Letting go of a key too early, even though you know what to do. Missing the lock with the key, forgetting how to spell ‘the’, tripping over your own feet. Does it happen to you too?
Oh, and I also learned that you can’t search for exclamation marks with a search engine. I suppose it’s obvious now I think of it. If you could, I’d be telling you how many times those quintruple exclamation marks show up.
Word of the day: Tmesis
-noun
The interpolation of one or more words between the parts of a compound word. An example would be un-very-likely as opposed to very unlikely.
