How to type Exclamation Mark
! is Shift + 1, in the same place on US and UK keyboards. Alt + 33 on the numeric keypad produces it on any Windows layout, which is the way in when the keyboard in front of you has no key for it, and ! writes it in HTML. Its codepoint is U+0021.
Exclamation Mark
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+0021
- Windows
- Alt + 33
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 33 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| HTML | ! | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+0021 | EXCLAMATION MARK |
Symbols related to Exclamation Mark
The Unicode code chart points from ! to ¡ and ⚠.
Other punctuation symbols
! lives in the Basic Latin block (U+0000-U+007F), the original ASCII set: the letters, digits and punctuation printed on a US keyboard. Within Unicode it is classified as Po, a punctuation mark.
What Exclamation Mark is used for
In mathematical notation ! is a closing delimiter: it pairs with an opening partner and grows to the height of whatever the pair encloses. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mathexclam$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ! in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and they are bang and point. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Exclamation Mark is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Exclamation Mark
The standard recognises ! under other names as well: factorial, bang. Those are a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why they turn up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
The code chart points from ! to Inverted Exclamation, Warning Sign, latin letter retroflex click (U+01C3), double exclamation mark (U+203C), interrobang (U+203D) and heavy exclamation mark symbol (U+2757). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Exclamation Mark looks nearly right but not quite.
How Exclamation Mark behaves in software
! takes one column in a terminal. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
What people ask about Exclamation Mark
What is two red exclamation marks mean?
! is EXCLAMATION MARK, encoded at U+0021. It is distinct from inverted exclamation mark (U+00A1) and latin letter retroflex click (U+01C3), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
Every way to write Exclamation Mark
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+0021 |
| Decimal | 33 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 21 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 21 |
| HTML entity | ! |
| HTML numeric | ! or ! |
| CSS | \0021 |
| JavaScript | \u0021 |
| Python | \u0021 |
| URL-encoded | %21 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mathexclam$ |
| SVG | 0021.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ! needs escaping
! is one byte in ASCII, in UTF-8 and in every code page in common use, so it never arrives corrupted. Its problem is the opposite one: it means something to the software reading it. In HTML it can be written !, in a URL it is %21, and inside a CSV field, a shell command or a regular expression it has to be quoted or escaped rather than typed plainly. That is also why ! is the character people substitute when the one they wanted will not type.