"Ain' no rule. It's a convention." Maybe you didn't notice,
Faldage, we, the party of
truth and consequences, have our own
convention.
If you and
tsuwm and your gang -
Musick, can
play fast and furious with the King's own punctuations,
well then, so can we. Watch me now...
(Paul Violi's poem, reproduced below,
inspired my invention of the punctuation mark ->
i <-.)
APPEAL TO
THE GRAMMARIANSWe the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we're capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its infections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we're ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whomever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratched shot,
The child whose ball doesn't bounce back,
The flat tire at journey's outset;
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it - here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, "See,that's why
I don't like to eat outside." 
...and so that is why I invented the upside down
exclamation point - "
i " for the computer keyboard.
I hope people don't confuse it with the small case
ithat is almost identical.
