Florence Hazrat: Das Ausrufezeichen. Eine rebellische Geschichte

How a punctuation mark moved the world

Hardly any other sign stirs our emotions like the exclamation mark. A pathos symbol that makes us cheer and rage, warns and motivates us - and yet it is misjudged as a "screaming" symbol or falls victim to populist power games.

The literary scholar Florence Hazrat frees the exclamation mark from the dusty drawers of grammar and gets to the bottom of its meaning as a universal, political and human phenomenon. How has it managed to establish itself across all cultures since its invention 600 years ago in Florence? Where has it changed the course of our history and how does it still shape our everyday life, art and culture today? And why have whole generations been consumed by it?

Hazrat tells of the power, history and future of a sign that miraculously enables us to put real feelings and physical expression into our written language - a quality that is more important than ever in our post-factual times!

"Florence Hazrat's jaunty, enjoyable and mischievous book is less a paean than a call to abandon the rules of the language police and reawaken a sense of wonder."

The Times

FLORENCE HAZRAT, born in Berlin, is one of the leading experts on the history and culture of punctuation. She studied English Literature at Cambridge and completed her doctorate at St Andrews University. She then carried out research at the universities of Geneva and Sheffield. She has published many interviews and articles on her passion, including in the Guardian, History Today and the Washington Post. In 2021, the BBC named her a 'New Generation Thinker'.