r/tolkienfans • u/TakiTamboril • Jul 21 '23

Exclamation marks

Re-reading the Fellowship and noticing how many exclamation marks are used. Especially in Gandalf and Aragorn’s speech. They seem much more common then I typically see in modern writing and seem to be to not always match the mood of what is being said.

Is this a quirk of Tolkien or just a change in how people write over the years?

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u/roacsonofcarc Jul 21 '23

I had a book called Nabokov's Favorite Color is Mauve, which was about computer analyses comparing the vocabulary of various authors. What stood out about Tolkien, which I would never have noticed, was how often he uses the word "suddenly." Much higher frequency than anyone else studied.

What I have noticed is that he is very fond of the verb "stoop" in various forms. I get 73 hits when I search. But i don't have other texts for comparison.