Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!uflorida!umd5!umbc3!rostamia
From: rostamia@umbc3.UMD.EDU (Dr. Rouben Rostamian )
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Explanation Point!
Message-ID: <1076@umbc3.UMD.EDU>
Date: 13 Jul 88 14:05:47 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Lines: 15

I am generally quite satisfied with the literary quality :-) of DEC's
manuals, program descriptions, sales pitches, etc.  So I was somewhat
taken aback when, looking up some input terminator codes for SMG
in sys$library:starlet.pas (and in smgdef.pas, too,)
I came across, among benign key names such as smg$_k_trm_lowercase_a,
smg$k_trm_dollar_sign, the key name smg$k_trm_explanation_point.

"Explanation point!" I exclamimed.  "This should be a newly invented
punctuation mark at DEC world, or a special character created by the
mysterious Compose key."  Alas, upon further investigation I discovered
that an ``Explanation Point'' is somebody's idea at DEC of what his or her
grammar teacher used to refer to as an ``exclamation point'' and    
write thusly "!".

Rouben Rostamian
rostamia@umbc3.umd.edu