Acclamation and Acclimation Marks
We don't necessarily "take requests," but truth be told we rarely turn down a fun challenge.
A friend, Dorothy, saw "exclamation point" malapropped as "acclamation point." Another friend, Jonathan, wished there were an acclamation point. "It would come in handy when a bunch of readers wanted to applaud somebody's blog post, or whatever." Dorothy further suggested an "acclimation mark, for when you finally get the hang of something. Someone should make those marks. And do a blog post on them."
Voilà!
We felt it important that the acclamation and acclimation points be typeable and not merely artist's renderings. So we'll note the Unicode entity identifiers for each mark.
Let's begin with our favorite acclamation point — complete with a demonstrative waving flag. Type a regular exclamation point, then a triangular dingbat next to it. Superscript the dingbat to raise it up the flagpole. The dingbat we use is Lucida Grande #8227.
Another acclamation point represents a martini glass raised in a toast (the Y portion is like the cross-section of a glass). It's Lucida Grande #7924.
A third acclamation point communicates vocal approval. A big circular mouth engulfs the dot. It's Lucida Grande #0664.
Different from the acclamation point is the acclimation point — indicative of becoming accustomed to new conditions. There are two acclimation points:
The first acclimation point signifies Dorothy's concept of "getting the hang of something." It features a dot at both the top and bottom, as if the mark were hanging from itself. It's Lucida Grande #7883.
The second acclimation point represents acclimatization as symbolized by an umbrella. It's Ludica Grande #7788.
For copy/paste convenience, below are each of the marks:
!‣ Ỵ ʘ ị Ṭ
