Settle an argument please

[islasmum]

I say that when you reach the end of a sentence with an exclamation mark, you do not have to put a full stop as well - the other half says that you should do so. What do other AB's think?

[Baldric]

! = no .

[beso]

gen2 //In many computer languages, comments are preceded by an exclamation mark to tell the compiler/interpreter that it is to be ignored. //

I was talking about the use of exclaimation marks in message boxes. For example "Printer is out of paper!" or "File Not Found!". I don't see the why every communication with the user needs to be exclaimed.

Many? That would be an overstatement. HTML and XML use the exclaimation mark as part of their comment tags.

However it is not involved of comments in any of the other significant modern programming languages and I don't know of any that use it alone to indicate a comment. It is used as the Not Operator in some.

[shoota]

Perhaps you might use a full stop before an exclamation mark (or question mark) after an abbreviation (eg:etc.!) but otherwise no.