Addressing persons with the @-sign and adding context with the #-sign is only the beginning of the abbreviation trend in business language*. While emojis are still non-business like, the innovative use of the preceding !-sign is spreading like wild fire. Example: !TradeReport. Here’s how to use it to appear tech savvy and 10-years younger.

Every digital conversation we have has at least four participants: Me, You, an attentive Big Brother and a Platform used for transmitting the messages. The exclamation mark in front of a command is used to access and interact with the Platform’s library. (Instead of adopting words from another spoken language, we are adopting it from a programming language. Pretty cool.) Whether the platform pretends it’s AI or not doesn’t really matter. It’s basically just pulling up data it has in it’s database. For instance, writing !Time will trigger the platform to display the current time. It’s not yet activated in iMessage or WhatsApp, but hipster companies are already using it in communication.

The exclamation mark at the end of a sentence is traditionally used to efficiently replace words such as “and hurry up” and “you stupid cow”.

Example: Where is the trade report!

When used in the beginning of a word, the exclamation mark replaces words such as “Could you kindly provide” and “Do you mind telling me”.

Example: !TradeReport

¡Atención! This is not to be confused with the capsized exclamation mark used in Spanish sight reading.

At any rate, next time you are writing to your younger subordinates, throw in a couple of !coffe, !clientmeeting and !JiraIssues to distract them from your medieval vocabulary and receding hairline.

#effectivecommunication

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@vanillaequity