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Pogasts. Let me begin my remarks by slash podcasts.

Let me begin my remarks by offering the new graduates a simple congratulations.

Given current trends, if I were communicating my message by social media or email, I would amplify the sentiment by adding an exclamation point, or two, or three or four. With the advent of online communication exclamation points have

taken on new life and new meanings. They seem to be everywhere. But not everybody is happy about it. One columnist recently wrote a piece

entitled Exclamation Proliferation and Why It Has to Stop. Another found the current use of Exclamation point self-centered calling the punctuation mark the selfie of grammar.

A character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series asserted that multiple exclamation points are a sure sign of a diseased mind.

And another character in that same series proclaimed that using five exclamation points is a sure sign of someone who

wears his underpants on his head. Surveying all this criticism one

columnist declared that given both its ubiquity and its ambiguous meaning, there is really only one rule

when it comes to the exclamation mark. Don't use it. As near as I can tell, no one is following that rule.

Now there's a good reason why the exclamation point has not been banned.

With a single mark, an exclamation point can communicate powerful messages in a highly effective and efficient way.

When novelist Victor Hugo wanted to know how sales of his book Le Mezorab were doing, his telegram

to his publisher contained only a single question mark.

His publisher responded with a single exclamation point, letting Hugo know that sales were strong. In that same vein, Elder Gifford Nielsen gave a

memorable general conference talk a few years ago, highlighting scriptures

about the gathering which ended with an exclamation point. He identified 65 such passages, noting that the exclamation

point showed what he called a strong missionary emotion. So exclamation points persist and I suggest that a brief history of the

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