Greetings everybody!

I just wanted to let you all know that I’m going to be on sabbatical for a few weeks from making LingMystic posts. Between classes restarting and work, I’m not going to have much time, and I don’t like to just leave things silent.

As always, I’ll be available for emailing (contact link in the top right part of the page) and you’re still welcome to comment, but there just won’t be much new.

So, enjoy the end of your summer, and keep looking out for awesome language!

Recently, I’ve been listening to GrammarGirl’s “Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing”. I’ve generally found the episodes to be very interesting, and even though I thought I knew some of the subjects well, I’ve definitely learned something each time. I’d highly recommend giving it a listen.

However, in one of her recent episodes which discussed punctuating questions, she mentioned something that really mystified me: The Interrobang. I’ll quote her explanation below:

GrammarGirl said:
And finally, when you’re asking a question in surprise such as What? it isn’t appropriate to use multiple question marks or a question mark with an exclamation point. You’re supposed to pick the terminal punctuation mark that is most appropriate and use just one (1). Is your statement more of a question or more of an outburst?

I’ve always found that solution unsatisfactory, so I was thrilled to learn that there’s an obscure punctuation mark that was designed exclusively for asking questions in a surprised manner. It’s called an interrobang, and it looks like an exclamation point superimposed on a question mark.

You shouldn’t use the interrobang in formal writing, but I think it would be great if people started using it on blogs and in other informal communications. If you have the Wingdings 2 font in your word processing program, you can insert an interrobang as a special character, and there are unicode values that you can use to add the interrobang to your web site. I’ve put those in the transcript of this episode.

Although it’s a rather cool looking symbol, I think it’s a rather silly idea, and demonstrates one of the most frustrating aspects of prescriptive grammar.

So, the interrobang exists for a very distinct reason: Sometimes, you want to express that you’re surprised as you ask a given question, but you can’t use two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence.

My first thought when I read that was “How have I never heard of that rule?!”

…wait. Something’s wrong. I just used two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence. And… everything’s OK. The reader understood me, understood that the question carried a note of surprise, and most importantly, the English language didn’t collapse in on itself or explode in a blaze of punctuational pyrotechnics. That must mean that the inability to end a sentence with two punctuation marks isn’t a natural, grammatical rule (like “I have walked” versus “I have walk”), but instead, is an arbitrary, stylistic rule.

So, basically, the Interrobang was created because an arbitrary, stylistic rule has forbidden what most people normally do to indicate a surprised question, the “?!” cluster. They’ve broken the language by disallowing the existing punctuation system, then created this new mark to bandage the wound they created. Am I the only person who sees this whole process as more than a little ridiculous?

Keep in mind, though, I’m not against all attempts at expanding our system of punctuation. I think that the Irony Mark might come in handy from time to time, and a sarcasm mark would be very useful for online communications.

However, the Interrobang strikes me as a cute, interesting, but ultimately unnecessary bit of novel punctuation. The interrobang is only necessary if we accept one particular bit of nitpicky stylistic dogma. When you couple its questionable reason for existence with the relative difficulty of finding and inserting the symbol compared to the simple “?!” cluster, it’s no wonder to me that it hasn’t caught on.

That’s not to say, however, that the interrobang is without it’s fans, who need to be represented as well. After forwarding the article to a friend of mine online, she responded with excitement to the idea:

Make sure you talk about the convenience of only one dot. I know you may be against it, but you must talk about both sides and be fair. A dot may not seem like a lot of time to someone, especially if you are particularly crafty with a pen. BUT think about if you are hyperbole happy. All the time you will save over the years. It’s really staggering.

So, although the interrobang has a future amongst hyperbole-happy minimalists and time-savers, the fact of the matter is that for the majority of people, the interrobang is never going to fly. You’re welcome to interrobang your writing to your heart’s content, but just don’t be surprised when your proofreading friend hands you back your essay with a big red circle around your interrobang, and a small note, scribbled in the margins, reading “What the heck is this?!”.

One year and two days ago, Notes from a Linguistic Mystic first went online.

Now, 367 days and 44,000+ unique visitors later, LingMystic is celebrating its first birthday.

This year has been above and beyond any of my expectations. In addition to being interviewed by the Australian State Press, I’ve been linked on Wikipedia in several places, and I get 100+ hits from google each day for people looking for linguistics information. It seems that the word is definitely getting out, and that brings me happiness.

However, what brings me the most joy and amazement is the loyal and fascinating group of people who read my site frequently and comment on my articles. It’s wonderful to hear that other people find these ideas useful and interesting, and it’s a great motivation. All comments, positive and negative, help me improve the site and give me new perspectives. I really do appreciate the involvement of the readers, and it really makes writing here even more worthwhile.

Gazing down the road

So, what’s planned for the next year of Notes from a Linguistic Mystic?

Well, the simple answer is more of the same. I’m hoping to continue writing whenever I get the chance and get an interesting idea, and I’ve got some very interesting topics in mind. I’m hoping to build on my past work with some longer, more involved posts about subjects about which I’m really knowledgeable, and I’m hoping to continue being a resource for people searching about the internet. However, there are also changes I’m planning to make.

I’ve found myself posting more and more on subjects that I suspect mainstream readers will find interesting, but that I’m not as knowledgeable or interested in. Although it certainly does succeed in getting up the numbers of viewers, I’m realizing that it makes this site less enjoyable for me to write and less credible for you to read. So, I’m going to return to my earlier tradition, writing about what interests me, rather than what I think would interest you. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to try to be boring, and I’m going to do my damnedest to keep the postings readable and interesting to all readers. Please feel free to guide me along this path, letting me know what you think of the posts and letting me know if there was anything you didn’t understand.

Also, I’ll be diversifying a bit. I’ve been invited to Guest-Blog for an article at another site (I’ll announce it formally when I’ve finished the post), and I’m also planning some other sub-projects. Although the Linguistic Mystic blog will always be my main presence on the internet, I’m hoping that there might be some other ways of bringing interesting language to the masses.

So, that said, thanks for a year of reading, and here’s to another year of writing.

Finally, some Linguisticism

Since I do my best to include some linguistics in every post, and given today’s post’s theme, I’d like to talk for a moment about the Spanish word for “year”, año. Now, as most Spanish learners will find out, it’s very important that the tilde (~) be included over the “n” in this word, telling us that the word is pronounced pronounced “anyo” (/ɑɲjo/).

Why, you might ask? Well, without the tilde, we have ano, which is the Spanish word for “anus”.

Sometimes, one can get away without accents and diacritics, but you’re going to want to pay close attention to the tilde. That is, unless you’d actually like to wish your friends a happy new anus.