Thursday, October 6, 2011

Interrobang

Interrobang - When you combine a question mark (?) with an exclamation point (!), it’s called an “interrobang”. The combination of the two marks (“?!” or “!?”) has been in use for an unknown amount of time, often in place to indicate surprise (“What the heck?!”) or to end an exclamatory rhetorical question (“It’s called an interrobang. How awesome is... that?!”).
The name “interrobang” and the symbol “‽” didn’t come about until the 1960s. The name itself comes from slang; typists used to refer to an “exclamation point” as a “bang”. The idea of combining the two symbols into one was invented by an advertiser named Martin Speckter in 1962. At the peak of its popularity the ‽ symbol started appearing as a key on typewriters in 1967. The neologism “interrobang” found its way onto dictionaries as an officially recognized word, and remains there to this day. People rarely use the symbol, and even less often use the word. Still, you can use & # 8253 (without the spaces) to create an interrobang in HTML. On Windows, you can get an interrobang with Alt+8253.
If you really like obscure symbols, you can’t go wrong with the “gnaborretni”, a backwards interrobang.



No comments:

Post a Comment