Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[sabrinak]

Hello, could you teach me how I should use a puctuation in a correct way?

"Father! Let me help you."

Here should I say "Father!" or "Father,"?

I hopefully want some of you to teach me the correct rule in terms of school grammar.

Thank you so much.

[CP]

Unless there is something urgent or surprising going on, you usually won't use the exclamation point. In the U.S., we rarely use it in writing, and certainly much less than, say, the Germans or the Swedes would do.

If you can do without the "banger," it's best to leave it off.

Having said that, I confess I use the exclamation point quite a lot on these forums, if only because students learning English tend to use them more often.

I'm sorry!
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[MauraS]

I suppose we don't use ! very often in regular text. But in the case of a novel or dialogue we do use ! if we want to express exclamation.

If the person is shouting for Father then the exclamation point is ok.

If the person is asking if it is the Father or checking if the Father will respond that the question mark is ok.