Why the BANG ?
Friday 20 August 2010 Filed in: Talent Tips
The "!" symbol is believed to have originated from the Latin word io, an exclamation of joy. It was formed as a digraph of the letters I and O...
In typesetting (and therefore when spelling text out orally), the “!” is called a bang. In UNIX scripting "!" (the bang) is used for logical negation; e.g. A != B means "A is not equal to B".
The [ta!ent scout] bang [ ! ] is used to signify that not all Talent is the same, and only a few are the truly top-performers.
Computers
In computing, the exclamation mark corresponds to ASCII character 33 (21 in hexadecimal). It is therefore found in Unicode at U+0021. The inverted exclamation mark is found in ISO-8859-1, 9 and 15 at position 161 (A1HEX) and therefore in unicode at U+00A1.
Several computer languages use "!" for various meanings, most importantly for logical negation; e.g. A != B means "A is not equal to B", and !A means "the logical negation of A" (also called "not A"). In this context, the exclamation is named the bang character; other programmers call it a shriek or screech. Invented in the US, it is claimed that bang is from Unix and shriek from Stanford or MIT; however, shriek is found in the Oxford English Dictionary dating from the 1860s. In the BBC BASIC programming language (and BCPL) it is called a pling and is used to reference a 32-bit word.
Plings are also used in Acorn RISC OS to denote an "appfolder": a folder that when double clicked executes a program file inside called !Run. Other files in the appfolder generally contain resources the application needs to run. The appfolder can be viewed as a normal folder by double-clicking with the shift key held down. In addition, other special resource files such as !Boot (executed the first time the application containing it comes into view of the filer) and !Sprites (an icon file containing icon definitions loaded if !Boot cannot be found) also start with a pling.
Early e-mail systems also used the exclamation point as a separator character between hostnames for routing information, usually referred to as "bang path" notation.
In the IRC protocol, a user's nickname and ident are separated by an exclamation point in the hostmask assigned to him or her by the server.
In the Geek Code version 3, "!" is used before a letter to denote that the geek refuses to participate in the topic at hand. In some cases, it has an alternate meaning, such as G! denoting a geek of no qualifications, !d denoting not wearing any clothes, P! denoting not being allowed to use Perl, and so on. They all share some negative connotations however.
When computer programs display messages that alert the user, an exclamation mark may be shown alongside it to indicate that the message is important and should be read.
Internet culture
In recent Internet culture, especially where leet is used, an excessive way of expressing exclamation in text is seen as !!!!!!111. This notation originates from the eagerness to add multiple exclamation marks but failing to hit the shift key–1 combination (to produce the mark on most keyboard layouts) properly. Later this behavior has evolved into a sign of recognition for certain Internet cultures who now intentionally add 1s after their expressions either to ridicule people who do it without purpose or as a sign of recognition towards others who also are familiar with the behavior. As a further pun to this development of linguistics, some add literal ones such as !!!!!one!11 to explicitly state that their use of 1s was intentionally typed, since one is fairly unlikely to be typed by accident.
Fandom
In fandom, "!" is used to signify a defining quality in a character, as in romantic! Draco from Harry Potter fandom. Almost always the character in question is a canon character, and most often the quality is one that is unusual, or non-canon.
Occasionally, the "!" notation will describe a physical appearance thought to trigger certain reactions, as in shirtless!Vaughn from Alias, or to clarify the current persona of a character, such as armor!Al from Fullmetal Alchemist. The origin of this usage is unknown, although it is hypothesized to have originated with certain Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, for example, "Football Player! Leonardo", "Rockstar! Raphael", and "Breakdancer! Michaelangelo". [1]
Music
A music group, based in Sacramento, California and New York City, NY has utilized the exclamation point to spell its name: !!!. The band's name is pronounced as "any syllable repeated three times"; the most frequent alpha respelling is "chk chk chk", pronounced as "Chick Chick Chick". Other pronunciations include "Pow Pow Pow" and "Bang Bang Bang". It is less often referred to as "Exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point", as that has proven too verbose.
In the popular music game In The Groove 2, there is a song called "!", which fans reference by the name "Bang".
Comics
This Action Comics cover from 1959 ends every sentence with an exclamation mark or question mark. Often, few or no periods would be used in the entire book.
Some comic books, especially superhero comics of the mid-20th century, routinely use the exclamation mark instead of the period. This tends to lead to exaggerated speech, inline with the other hyperboles common in comic books. A portion of the motivation, however, was simply that a period might disappear in the printing process used at the time, whereas an exclamation point would likely remain recognizable even if there was a printing glitch.
In comic books and comics in general, a large exclamation mark is often used in the proximity of a character's head to indicate surprise. A question mark can similarly be used to indicate confusion. This practice also appears in some computer and video games.
Chess
Main article: Punctuation (chess)
In chess notation "!" denotes a good move and "!!" denotes an excellent move. Likewise, in some chess variants such as large board Shogi variants, "!" is used to record pieces capturing by stationary feeding or burning.
Baseball
Exclamation marks or asterisks can be used on scorecards to denote a "great defensive play".[6]
Sarcasm
In writing and often subtitles, especially in British English, a (!) symbol (an exclamation mark within brackets) implies that a character has made an obviously sarcastic comment eg: "Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a really useful invention(!)"[7]