Comments on: The Interrobang: Stylistic Superfluity sans Sanity

By: LeV

LeV — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 23:43:29 +0000

Those punctuation signs came into use as practical rhetorical devices. They were written horizontal first and marked the intonation, whether to raise (~), to drop (.) or to emphasis (-) the voice before pausing in a speech. They became grammatical devices later on. But still, there is a rhetorical/semantical function, as well as a formatting function. (Imagine reading a latin-codex from anno 800 with no spaces between words and no punctuation at all – this is kind of difficult, believe me!) I use !? and … the same as i use smilies/emoticons – for non-verbal semantic and/or poetical purposes. I do not use them excessively, but as a sensitive speaker. Written language lacks of non-verbal signs, this could result in misunderstanding, when using it for direct conversation. So i don’t understand insisting on the presciption of a language, rather than the description. It is not at all silly or wrong (in pragmatic view) to use the !?-cluster.

@Jangari: I’ve often seen examples when an exclamation or question mark was used and the sentence continued, using minuskel to demonstrate the sign didn’t mark the end of the sentence. (Unfortunately, i just have german examples in mind.)

By: Dave Bath

Dave Bath — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 07:22:38 +0000

It may be a hangover from parsing code, but I’ve often felt the need to match question marks like I do braces, indicating the start and end of a block. In notes for myself, and sometimes for others, I’ll use the spanish inverted question mark to open the question, even if the question as an aside ¿parenthetical" inside a sentence. I’m less tempted to use an upside down bang to introduce emphasis like ¡this!, but it does occasionally make sense. ¿Have English punctuation mavens ever raised this possibility? ¿Is this punctuation tendency common to those programming in languages like C (or even ¡lisp!)?

By: schmendrick

schmendrick — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:52:22 +0000

I don’t agree at all it is a question and should be ended that way. If it were acceptable to use a set of punctuation ?! it would be taught in school. It seems to me as a attempt to complicate a language that is already a proverbial bear to learn anyhow.

By: Maxwell

Maxwell — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 12:54:22 +0000

I agree with Nate True. I’m not quite sure how exactly I judge it, but my ordering may be in reference to whether the sentence is a question form (“what?!”, or with subject-verb inversion, for instance) or a normal sentence that, as a plain question, would simply be inflected (“he ate the cat!?”). I personally met the latter (!?) form first, so it seems much more aesthetic than “?!”, which seems inelegantly unbalanced if I stare at it for a while.

I think its niftiness is identical to the niftiness one might feel, perhaps, in finding a single word for your mother’s husband’s son. My reaction is always that, for no reason whatsoever, it’s a great thing to be able to do something in a single unit over any other number of units (even so small as these). “Saudade”, by exaggerated example, is much more nifty than the whole paragraph defining it, though it’s the same thought. I feel the growing love for the interrobang is similar in source.

By: marktristan

marktristan — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 12:06:56 +0000

Of course something can be both a question and an exclamation. But I can’t imagine how something would be “more of an exclamation” and less a question (i.e. necessitating !? rather than ?!).

Related to this topic: what do you think of the increasing use of smileys in informal communication?

I use them sparingly but I think they’re great :)

By: Nate True

Nate True — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:46:36 +0000

Wow, I didn’t know it had a name. I’d always called it the Exclaquestion Point – an admittedly silly name.

I do, however, like to order the ? and ! according to whether the sentence is more of a question or more of an exclamation. The more relevant one comes first.

By: Jangari

Jangari — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 05:08:36 +0000

I’ve often written sentences for which no punctuation mark is quite adequate, and in instances where putting two together looks and feels completely wrong. Specifically, I’ve often wanted to combine a question mark with a comma to create a semi-question, i.e., one that doesn’t quite end the sentence, the sentence continues after the semi-question and may or may not ultimately end in a question. I’m trying to think of an example, but it’s incredibly difficult.

The combination ?, looks entirely inappropriate, whereas ?! to me looks and feels great! At the end of the day, I’m all for creating extra punctuation marks where supralexical meaning cannot be encoded into the narrow set we currently have (nor by combination of two or three of them), but I also agree that the interrobang is unnecessary; ?! will do fine.