Business's ! has a point

Speaking of business names with exclamation points, what's with the punctuation in the name Go! Running?

The owner of the Little Rock running boutique, Gary Taylor, explains that when he and business partner Frank O'Mara were planning the business, O'Mara thought they should name the shop "Go, Gaz."

"When I used to run in England, my mom used to scream -- I could hear her from a mile away -- 'Go, Gaz!'" Taylor says. Gaz is a British nickname for Gary. "I'm like, no, that's crazy. Nobody's going to know what Gaz is. So it became Go!

"That's in homage to my mom who died a long time ago."

Why not put the exclamation point on the end, after "Running"?

"The whole idea was eventually the name would just become Go!" he says, because customers give stores nicknames. "If it was 'Go Running!' and you lost the 'Running!' then it's just the word G-O. Might be hard to get a trademark on that."

What if a copy editor annoyed by punctuated business names were to shout the following? How should it be punctuated?

a. "Egad, they are pushing my buttons at Go!"

b. "Egad, they are pushing my buttons at Go!!"

Bernadette Kinlaw, who writes the Watch Your Language! column (note the point) suggests a third alternative:

c. "Egad, they are pushing my buttons at Go!"!

The exclamation point normally goes outside the quotation mark unless it's part of the name, she says.

-- Celia Storey

ActiveStyle on 11/20/2017

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