Primary school pupils will only get credit for using exclamation marks in sentences beginning with ‘what’ or ‘how’, under strict new UK Government rules.
Ministers have been accused of “taking writing back to the 19th century” after issuing the restrictive new guidance over what counts as an “exclamation”.
“For the purposes of the English grammar, punctuation and spelling test, an exclamation is required to start with What or How,” the guidance for Key Stage 1 and 2 national curriculum tests states.
It is used to continue a thought that could have ultimately been stopped earlier in the sentence.