Hi, we've got three stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.

I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about how exclamation points are stressing people out, why ice might be stopping us from discovering an alien civilization,

and Transnistria, a country that doesn't exist.

Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily. When you think about the things that stress you out,

you might think about your job or your relationships or traffic.

But how about this one?

Punctuation.

There are real-world effects from our use of punctuation, and it's important to think about in today's world of texts and tweets.

So think about this. Have you ever gotten a message with no closing punctuation and completely over analyzed it.

Here's an example, let's say someone sends you a message that says,

that's fine, just two words.

The way you interpret that message could be hugely different if it ends with a period or with an exclamation point and even with no punctuation at all

If you've ever felt like someone hates you because they didn't end their text with an exclamation

point, then you have dealt with an actual phenomenon known as punctuation

inflation. See not too long ago you were supposed to use one exclamation point

in the most extreme and emotional

situations. Julie Beck is a senior editor at The Atlantic and she recently wrote

quote at journalism school I was told you get one exclamation point to use in your entire career, so you should use it wisely.

You could perhaps spend your one exclamation point on a headline, like,

war over, in all caps. But nothing less would merit one unquote then

...