Exclamations

Exclamations are utterances that express strong emotion, reaction, or emphasis. They can be single words, short phrases, or full sentences. In spoken language, emotion is conveyed by intonation, volume, and facial expression; in writing, exclamations are typically marked with an exclamation point and sometimes by capitalization or typographic emphasis.

Exclamations fall into two broad categories: interjections and exclamatory sentences. Interjections are standalone words or particles such as oh, wow, alas, yikes, and ouch. Exclamatory sentences express emotion through their syntax, as in What a beautiful day! How clever you are! What a relief!

Exclamations serve several communicative functions, including signaling surprise, pain, joy, or anger; adding emphasis; or conveying a speaker's attitude, sarcasm, or sympathy. In formal writing, exclamations are used sparingly, while in fiction and dialogue they reveal character and emotional nuance. Cross-linguistically, languages differ in how exclamations are formed, using dedicated particles, special punctuation, or particular intonational patterns.

Exclamations are often more about delivery than content: the same words can be exclamatory with different punctuation or prosody. They are a common feature of everyday speech as well as performative or rhetorical language, and they help mark tone and stance within discourse.