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Interrobang
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The interrobang (/ɪn'tɛrəbæŋ/) (‽) is a rarely used, nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of a question mark and an exclamation point. The typographical character resembles those marks superimposed one over the other, and the name interrobang comes from interro - from interrogative - and bang - used to amplify the exclamation. In informal writing, the same effect is achieved by placing the exclamation point after or before the question mark, e.g. "How could you do such a thing?!".
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Depending on one's perspective, a sentence ending with an interrobang either asks a question in an excited manner or expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question.
For example:
- How much did you spend on those shoes‽
- You're going out with Madeline‽
- She did what‽
Many writers, especially in informal writing, have used multiple punctuation marks to end a sentence expressing surprise and question.
- What the....?! Neves, Called Dead in Fall, Denies It (headline from San Francisco Examiner, May 9, 1936)
The question mark frequently comes first (to emphasize that it is a question), although there is no universal style rule on the subject. This order has an advantage of being unambiguous in certain circumstances, such as when dealing with numbers or other mathematical terms, the exclamation mark being used in mathematics to refer to a factorial. For example, the sentence "What is 5!?" in mathematics would be interpreted as a question asking the value of the factorial of five.
It is not uncommon for writers in very informal situations to use several question marks and exclamation marks for even more emphasis:
- He did what?!?!?!
Like multiple exclamation marks and multiple question marks, such strings are generally considered very poor style in formal writing.
Writers combined question marks and exclamation points, and used multiple punctuation marks, for decades before the interrobang was invented. They were prevalent in informal media such as print advertisements and comic books. They are currently used in algebraic chess notation with "!?" showing an interesting move that may not be the best, and "?!" showing a dubious move that may nevertheless be difficult to refute.
American Martin K. Speckter concocted the interrobang itself in 1962. As the head of an advertising agency, Speckter believed that advertisements would look better if advertising copywriters conveyed surprised queries using a single mark. He proposed the concept of a single punctuation mark in an article in the magazine TYPEtalks. Speckter solicited possible names for the new character from readers. Contenders included rhet, exclarotive, and exclamaquest, but he settled on interrobang. He chose the name to reference the punctuation marks that inspired it. Interrogatio is Latin for "a rhetorical question" or "cross-examination"; bang is printers' slang for "exclamation point". [1] The French equivalent is "point exclarrogatif", expressing a similar idea - the fusion between "point d'interrogation" (?) and "point d'exclamation" (!).
Graphic treatments for the new mark were also submitted in response to the article.
In 1966, Richard Isbell of American Type Founders issued the Americana typeface and included the interrobang as one of the characters. In 1968, an interrobang key was available on some Remington typewriters. During the 1970s, it was possible to buy replacement interrobang keycaps and strikers for some Smith-Corona typewriters. The interrobang was in vogue for much of the 1960s, with the word 'interrobang' appearing in some dictionaries and the mark itself being featured in magazine and newspaper articles.
The interrobang failed to amount to much more than a fad, however. It has not become a standard punctuation mark. Although most fonts do not include the interrobang, it has not disappeared: Microsoft provides several versions of the interrobang character as part of the Wingdings 2 character set ( on the }/] and the ~/` keys) available with Microsoft Office. It was accepted into Unicode and is present in the fonts Lucida Sans Unicode and Arial Unicode MS, among others.
A reverse and upside down interrobang (combining ¿ and ¡), suitable for starting phrases in Spanish, Asturian, and Galician is called by some a gnaborretni (interrobang backwards). Michael Everson proposed it for inclusion in the Unicode standard. The Unicode Technical Committee and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 have accepted it to be encoded in the standard with the tentative code point of U+2E18 (⸘) but it is not yet formally a part of the standard.[2] In current practice, interrobang-like emphatic ambiguity in Hispanic languages is achieved by mixing the punctuation marks: ¡Verdad? or ¿Verdad!
The interrobang is not a standard punctuation mark. Few modern typefaces or fonts include a glyph for the interrobang character. It is at Unicode code point U+203D. It can be used in HTML documents with ‽ or ‽, although the second form has poor support in common web browsers. The Interrobang can be used in some word processors with the alt code ALT+8253, if you are working in a font that supports the interrobang or are using an operating system that performs font substitution.
Depending on the browser and which fonts the user has installed, some of these may be displayed.
| Image | Default font | Fixed | Palatino Linotype | Arial Unicode MS |
Code2000 | Unicode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
‽ | ‽ | ‽ | ‽ | ‽ | ‽ |
- The interrobang is featured in Michael Gerber's Barry Trotter books (parodies of Harry Potter) as Barry's scar; it therefore features in some of the cover images.
- An Italian television series called Interbang prominently featured the symbol. The series was based in and around Pisa, and featured two children trying to collect a number of souvenir statues of the Leaning Tower. Each statue had a different coloured version of an interrobang.
- The Interrobang is the name of Bennington College's literary magazine.
- In the comic book Pirate Corps, one character's family owns a robot servant named Interbang, which has a large interrobang symbol emblazoned on its chest. At one point the character orders the robot to beat up all the skinheads in a nightclub; from outside the club the reader then sees a spray of visual "sound effects", including interrobangs, indicating the brawl inside.
- In Steven Gould's novel Reflex, Interrobang is the name of a New York coffee shop where the protagonist is kidnapped.
- In Lynne Truss's book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, the interrobang is described as "daft" and featured as a future hit with the current "send" society.
- In Johnny Hart's comic strip B.C. for 27 February 2007, interrobang is defined as "When a 'perp' gets accidentally whacked when the interrogator's gun goes off".
- The interrobang is featured in the logo for the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
- The Interrobang - making it ubiquitous
- World Wide Words - Interrobang
- The Interrobang is Back (by Allan Haley)
- Interrobang on the Microsoft fontblog