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Comment by Doches | Hacker News Reader

> Through Trump’s posturing and the mark’s erect body and one-balled bottom, ! has become “aggressively phallic,” and is in bad need of saving.

Why -- why -- do contemporary American writers feel the need to inject their political affiliation into every piece they make public? This is a pop-academic essay on the use of exclamations in literature, not a NYT op-ed.

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It’s called “identity politics” for a reason: it’s no longer who one votes for but an entire world view about who one is —- and more importantly who one is not and it demands to be constantly displayed and reinforced.

I agree - its truly tiresome. But then, if all the media is banging on about Trump + Russian collusion for 3 years, as if there was nothing else, I guess this does impact people.

The exclamation point is definitely falling out of fashion. It, like capitalizing "ok", is now a marker that the writer is older. Except in formal contexts, when a young person wants to exclaim they don't use an exclamation point, they use capitals.

"OK, look, I almost died!" <- Boomer

"Ok, look, I ALMOST DIED <- Zoomer

Have to disagree with the usage of OK. It's pretty standard usage in American English [1].

I wouldn't say that the user of OK is older;rather, they tend to be, "not dumb."

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK

Found the older person!

What is "correct" changes over time with how the language is used. Examples of recent changes include dropping the hyphen from double-e words like re-enter and pre-empt and pre-eminent, and growing acceptance of beginning sentences with conjunctions like "and".

fwiw {U+1F197 SQUARED OK} is capitalized “OK” in every emoji font I’ve ever seen

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