Abstract: The usage of the exclamation mark has changed over time but continues to serve as an important textual interpretation aid. Punctuation itself has not been a permanent fixture in English, rather it was slowly introduced to English documents with changing standard usages after the invention of the printing press. Here we highlight the use of the exclamation mark across major editions of the Book of Mormon and document the presence of the exclamation mark in a reference table.

table {border: 1px solid #dddddd; width: 100%; margin: auto; font-size: 85%;} td, th {border: 1px solid #dddddd; padding: 5px !important; text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;} th {background-color: #eeeeee; color: #373737 !important; font-size: 100% !important; font-weight: 700 !important; text-transform: none !important; line-height: 1.5 !important} .centered td, .centered th {text-align: center !important;} .right td, .right th {text-align: right !important;} td.left, th.left {text-align: left !important;} td.centered, th.centered {text-align: center !important;} td.right, th.right {text-align: right !important;} table.noborder, table.noborder td{border: 0px solid #ffffff; padding: 0 5px !important} p.caption-text {text-align: center !important; margin-top: 1em !important; font-weight: 700;} .chiasm-b {padding-left: 2em;} .chiasm-c {padding-left: 4em;} .chiasm-d {padding-left: 6em;} .chiasm-e {padding-left: 8em;} .chiasm-f {padding-left: 10em;} .chiasm-g {padding-left: 12em;} p.caption {margin-top: 1em !important; text-align: center !important;}

When the Book of Mormon was first translated and dictated by Joseph Smith to his scribe Oliver Cowdery, it was done without punctuation. The original manuscript was thus a stream of unbroken text. Though Cowdery and another scribe added scattered punctuation to the printer’s manuscript, a compositor for the Grandin Press, John Gilbert, largely disregarded it.1 Instead, Gilbert primarily employed his own punctuation and paragraphing — even with no affiliation to the new Church. John Gilbert commented on the 1830 manuscript some sixty-three years later:

Every chapter, if I remember correctly, was one solid paragraph, without a punctuation mark, from beginning to end. … I punctuated it to make it read as I supposed the [Page 266]Author intended, and but very little punctuation was altered in proof-reading.2

From these remarks, it is unclear whether Gilbert was referring to Smith or the ancient authors of various books within the Book of Mormon. Even still, the overwhelming majority of John Gilbert’s edits were deemed acceptable by early Church leaders for the first publication of the Book of Mormon. According to Royal Skousen, compiler of The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, it is estimated “that over 90 percent of Gilbert’s punctuation marks in the printer’s and original manuscripts were carried over without change into the 1830 edition.”3

Since the first edition in 1830, there have been twenty English editions of the Book of Mormon recognized by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the Community of Christ (formerly Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter...