As I returned from Gatwick to Oxford in the coach, I watched the exhortations upon the screen.
"Check our website!"
"Leave a review on Trip Adviser!"
"Leave a review on Google!"
"You can pay by using contactless payment!"
"Download our new App!"
"Check out our website for inspiration!"
"Let us know!"
"Scan me!"
"Welcome aboard!"
"Check out our discounted items!"
A large percentage is in grammatical imperatives. Is the ubiquitous exclamation mark a new convention in the uttering of instructions?
7 comments:
Almost. I think it is meant to indicates an upbeat and enthusiastic tone of voice, conveying a sense of urgency and excitement without actually shouting (which would be conveyed by using ALL CAPS in the modern internet convention)
The convention in German, I believe.
At least you aren't getting the "see it say it sorted" that drove me crazy last year riding trains in Britain. I can't remember my son's phone number but I can still remember the one for British Transport Police!
As I understand it, exclamation marks are commonly used for exclamations and short/shortish imperatives.
Thus - Stop! Go away! Come here!
So I suppose it is a matter of judgement how long an imperative needs to be before an exclamation mark looks out of place.
“ Gentelmen lift the seat”. Is that an Imperative or an Affirmation?
"Gentlemen, lift the seat" is a command, whereas "Gentlemen lift the seat" is a statement. It seems to me that it is only a matter of the comma after "Gentlemen".
We still learnt in school that after an imperative, the exclamation mark is the norm; the full-stop is the exception employed if you wish to stress that the order is given very much without emphasis, e. g. in a recipe setting.
However, the ubiquitous full-stop appears to be a new convention in the uttering of instructions (to borrow our reverend host's expression).
The language I am talking about is, of course, German. Maybe English is driving in the opposite direction?
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