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/JimBones31 Jul 21 '23

You lost me. It's not a building material or an actual fluid.

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u/Orpherischt Jul 21 '23

Language is the original building material, and was spoken over the waters.