DARN IT! It’s a punctuation situation!!!!!!
After Donald trump dies, will he return to earth as an exclamation mark? It’s by far his favourite form of punctuation. Since he started tweeting, he has produced no fewer than 9,261 exclamation marks, or 14,854, if you include his re-tweets. By any measure, that’s an awful lot of exclaiming.
His very first tweet, issued on May 4, 2009, closed with one. ‘Be sure to tune in and watch Donald trump on Late Night With Letterman as he presents the top ten List tonight!’
Since then, it’s been exclamations all the way, with 3,660 exclamation marks last year alone. In the past few weeks, he’s gone exclamation mad. ‘ Not acceptable!’ he tweeted yesterday about the behaviour of russia and China. ‘ Mission accomplished!’ he tweeted after the bombing of Syria.
the day before, just one of his tweets contained no fewer than six exclamation marks, four by themselves, and two in a row: ‘DOJ just issued the McCabe report — which is a total disaster. HE LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey — McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!’
Most of his recent tweets have ended with an exclamation mark, eg ‘It was my great honor to fire James Comey!’ (April 13), ‘AMERICAN SPIRIT is back!’ (April 12), ‘Lots to discuss as we continue MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’ (April 11) and ‘A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!’ (April 10).
As you see, that last one, which consisted of just those four words, featured three exclamation marks in a row.
that may seem excessive, but in fact he has used three in a row or more in 437 different tweets and retweets, among them: ‘ FRACK NOW AND FRACK FAST!!! (December 17, 2013), ‘ Where’s Hillary? Sleeping!!!!!’ (Aug 19, 2016) and ‘ for many years our country has been divided, angry and untrusting. Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. It WILL CHANGE!!!! (January 15, 2017).
In this ongoing exclamathon, Donald trump achieved a personal best on March 2, 2014. He was watching that year’s Academy Awards.
By chance it involved everything that makes him furious: it was hosted by ellen DeGeneres; 12 Years A Slave won Best Picture; Matthew McConaughey won Best Actor for his performance as an AIDS victim in Dallas Buyers Club; and Alfonso Cuaron, a Mexican, won Best Director.
‘Was President Obama in charge of this years Academy Awards — they remind me of the ObamaCare website!’ was one of his tweets that night. He rounded them off with an attack on the 81-year-old actress Kim Novak — ‘Kim should sue her plastic surgeon!’
But he hit his exclamatory highwater mark at 5.19am, tweeting: ‘this cannot be the Academy Awards. AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’.
this frenzied tweet achieved no fewer than 15 exclamation marks all in a row, like a demented formation dance team in the handstand Olympics.
President trump has become increasingly fond of placing exclamation marks after each insult, which he often writes in capital letters for extra emphasis: ‘AWFUL!’, ‘ BAD! SAD!’, ‘ TERRIBLE!’, ‘ VERY UNFAIR!’ and, INEVITABLY, ‘ FAKE NEWS!’.
the exclamation mark, or point, as it is known in America, has long been viewed as the most vulgar form of punctuation. Oddly enough, it wasn’t even included on most American keyboards until 1970. One of America’s foremost style manuals still advises that it ‘should be used sparingly to be effective’.
‘An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes,’ was the opinion of f. Scott fitzgerald.
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idea of someone joshing, or signalling his own unseriousness, that makes trump’s most recent tweets about bombs particularly chilling: ‘ Get ready russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!’
In trump’s hands, the exclamation mark, coupled with capitals, is less like someone laughing at his own joke, and more like someone bellowing in your ear like a bully.
the late novelist terry Pratchett suggested that a man’s sanity lies in inverse proportion to the number of exclamation marks he employs.
‘All those exclamation marks, you notice?’ says a character in his book Maskerade. ‘ A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.’