Jay Chou

Jay Chou ((traditional Chinese: 周杰倫; simplified Chinese: 周杰伦; pinyin: Zhōu Jiélún, born 18 January 1979) is a Taiwanese musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, director, and actor.

In 2000, Chou released his debut album, titled Jay (2000), under the record company Alfa Music. Since then his music has gained recognition throughout Asia, most notably in regions such as Taiwan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, Japan and in the Asian communities of Western countries such as the United States and Australia. He has sold more than 30 million albums and has received numerous awards for his musical work. Chou has also written songs for other artists whilst working on his albums. In 2003, he was the cover story of Time magazine (Asia version), titled New King of Asian Pop, acknowledging his influence on popular culture. He has since held six world tours, performing in cities around the world to more than 10 million people.

Chou debuted his acting career in the film Initial D (2005); followed shortly by his role as the honorable son, Prince Jai, in the multi-nominated Mandarin Chinese epic, Curse Of The Golden Flower (2006). He has since ventured into many other movie projects, becoming known to western audiences when he made his Hollywood debut in 2011 with The Green Hornet, starring alongside Seth Rogen and Christoph Waltz. Chou also manages his own record and management company JVR Music.

Exclamation mark

The exclamation mark (Commonwealth English) or exclamation point (American English) is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume (shouting), and often marks the end of a sentence. Example: “Watch out!” Similarly, a bare exclamation mark (with nothing before or after) is often used in warning signs.

The mark can also be used at the beginning of a word instead of at the end. For example, several computer languages use "!" for logical negation; e.g. "!A" means "the logical negation of A", also called "not A". There are many other specialized uses of this mark, such as in mathematics where it denotes the factorial operation.

History

Graphically the exclamation mark is represented as a full stop point with a vertical line above. One theory of its origin is that it is derived from a Latin exclamation of joy (io). The modern graphical representation is believed to have been born in the Middle Ages. The Medieval copyists used to write at the end of a sentence the Latin word io to indicate joy. The word io meant hurray. Along time, the i moved above the o, and the o became smaller, becoming a point.