science

Interrobang

Interrobang is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Interrobang rather than just read about it. In short: The interrobang, ‽, also known as the interabang, is a punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also known as the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark (also known in the jargon of printers as a "bang"). The glyph is a combination of those two marks and was first proposed in 1962 by Martin K.

Key takeaways

Interrobang belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Interrobang to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Interrobang from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The interrobang, ‽, also known as the interabang, is a punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also known as the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark (also known in the jargon of printers as a "bang"). The glyph is a combination of those two marks and was first proposed in 1962 by Martin K. Speckter. Other rejected names for the interrobang were the "emphaquest," "interropoint" or "exclarogative"

Application A sentence ending with an interrobang states a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement, disbelief, or confusion in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question. For example:

You call that a hat‽ Are you out of your mind‽ Are you a dummy‽ Writers using informal language may use several alternating question marks and exclamation marks for even more emphasis. However, this is regarded as poor style in formal writing.

History

Historically, writers have used multiple consecutive punctuation marks to end a sentence expressing both surprise and question.

What the...?! Neves, Called Dead in Fall, Denies It

Invention American Martin K. Speckter (June 14, 1915 – February 14, 1988) conceptualized the interrobang in 1962. As the head of an advertising agency, Speckter believed that advertisements would look better if copywriters conveyed surprised rhetorical questions 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 exclamaquest, and exclarotive, but he settled on interrobang. He chose the name to reference the punctuation marks that inspired it: interrogatio is Latin for "rhetorical question" or "cross-examination"; bang is printers' slang for the exclamation mark. Graphic treatments for the new mark were also submitted in response to the article.

Early interest In 1965, Richard Isbell created the Americana typeface for American Type Founders and included the interrobang as one of the characters. In 1968, an interrobang key was available on some Remington typewriters. In the 1970s, replacement interrobang keycaps and typefaces were available for some Smith-Corona typewriters. The interrobang was in vogue for much of the 1960s; the word interrobang appeared in some dictionaries, and the mark was used in some magazine and newspaper articles.

Continued support Most fonts do not include the interrobang, but it has not disappeared. Lucida Grande, the default font for many UI elements of legacy versions of Apple's OS X operating system, includes the interrobang, and Microsoft provides several versions of the interrobang in the Wingdings 2 character set (on the right bracket and tilde keys on US keyboard layouts), included with Microsoft Office. It was accepted into Unicode and is included in several fonts, including Lucida Sans Unicode, Arial Unicode MS, and Calibri, the default font in the Office 2007, 2010, and 2013 suites.

Upside-down interrobang

An upside-down interrobang (⸘), combining ¿ and ¡, suitable for starting phrases in Spanish, Galician, and Asturian—which use inverted question and exclamation marks—is called an "inverted interrobang" or, rarely, a gnaborretni (interrobang spelled backwards). In current practice, interrobang-like emphatic ambiguity in Hispanic languages is usually achieved by including both sets of punctuation marks, one inside the other: (¿¡De verdad!? or ¡¿De verdad?! [Really!?]). Older usage, still official but not widespread, recommended mixing the punctuation marks: ¡Verdad? or ¿Verdad!

Codepoint

The symbol is encoded in Unicode's General Punctuation block at codepoint U+203D ‽ INTERROBANG. Unicode encodes these variants:

U+2048 ⁈ QUESTION EXCLAMATION MARK U+2049 ⁉ EXCLAMATION QUESTION MARK ⁉️ with an emoji variation selector U+2E18 ⸘ INVERTED INTERROBANG U+1F679 🙹 HEAVY INTERROBANG ORNAMENT U+1F67A 🙺 SANS-SERIF INTERROBANG ORNAMENT U+1F67B 🙻 HEAVY SANS-SERIF INTERROBANG ORNAMENT

Examples of use The State Library of New South Wales, in Australia, uses an interrobang as its logo, as did the educational publishing company Pearson, which thus intends to convey "the excitement and fun of learning". The logo of the National Endowment for the Humanities incorporates eight exclamation marks and eight question marks; although their main strokes are separate, they all share the same dot, as in some variants of interrobangs. Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook used an interrobang in the 2012 United States Seventh Circuit opinion Robert F. Booth Trust v. Crowley. Australian Federal Court Justice Michael Wigney used an interrobang in the first paragraph of his 2018 judgment in Faruqi v Latham [2018] FCA 1328 (defamation proceedings between former Federal Opposition Leader Mark Latham and political campaigner and writer Osman Faruqi). In chess, an interrobang is used to represent a dubious move, one that is questionable but possibly has merits. (See also the evaluation symbols ?! (dubious move) and !? (interesting move).)

See also Inverted question and exclamation marks – Punctuation marks (¿ and ¡)Pages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets Percontation point – Mark (⸮) for a rhetorical question

Notes

References

External links

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Interrobang

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Interrobang claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Interrobang before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Interrobang ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Interrobang

In research: Interrobang appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Interrobang in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Interrobang is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1960s neologisms, Latin-script ligatures, Punctuation, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Interrobang outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Interrobang in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Interrobang means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Interrobang out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Interrobang in simple terms?

Why does Interrobang matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Interrobang?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Interrobang.