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I just read in a comic book How great is it that your partner knows so many good restaurants! Is this substandard English? Or are there some types of clauses (e.g. It-clefts) that have exclamative versions both with and without Subject-Auxiliary Inversion like (1) and (2)?

(1) How great it is that your partner knows so many good restaurants!

(2) How great is it that your partner knows so many good restaurants!

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  • It would be more standardly punctuated with a question mark, but I've a feeling some sources use the exclamation mark (maybe because using both question mark and exclamation mark together is controversial.) I thought this had been asked here before, but I can't see it.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jul 4, 2022 at 9:01
  • It is possible, though less likely, to have subject-auxiliary inversion, as in "What a disaster would it be if Labour won the election!", but this is much less likely than the uninverted "What a disaster it would be if Labour won the election!" It follows that in your examples, (1) is possible but less likely than (2). No question mark is needed in (2).
    – BillJ
    Commented Jul 4, 2022 at 10:22
  • How great is that! is an idiomatic exclamative utterance — in American English anyway. So How great is it that... is as well. Your (2) sounds better to my ears.
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented Jul 5, 2022 at 2:18
  • I guess it's okay to invert, informally. But if you want to know what is within the rules of the exclamation point -- I don't think it would work in formal English.
    – aparente001
    Commented Jul 6, 2022 at 2:44

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The comic (in the link in your post) actually says:

How great is it that your partner knows so many good restaurants ?!

This sequence of a question mark followed by an exclamation point is generally used to mark a question that is said with special emphasis. Since this is a question, subject-auxiliary inversion is not unexpected.

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