Interrobang

Interrobang (pronounced in-ter-uh-bang)

A punctuation mark (‽) which merges the question mark (?) and the exclamation mark (!) to indicate a query made as an interjection.

1962: A blended word and an invention of US English, the construct being the Latin Latin interro(gātiō) (examination, inquiry, interrogation, questioning) + bang (in this context typesetters’ slang for the exclamation mark (exclamation point in US use), the glyph a ligature of these two marks (the unicode is U+203d).  The even more rare alternative spelling is interabang.  The companion term is gnaborretni (interrotbang reversed, the plural being gnaborretnis) which uses the a symbol (⸘) (an inverted interrobang) to replace the ¡¿ used in Spanish, Galician, and Leonese, just as in English the interrobang can replace !? or ?! (the unicode is U+2E18).  Interrobang is a noun, the noun plural interrobangs.  All other forms are non-standard but interrobanged, interrobanger & interrobanging will presumably be deployed as circumstances seem to dictate and UrbanDictionary users noted the possibilities with predictable suggestions.

Variations on the theme.

Now sixty years old, interrobang was coined in 1962 by US American advertising executive Martin K Speckter (1915–1988) who suggested it in an article written for the printing trade journal TYPEtalks.  As a commodity, the interrobang was an example of a slightly better mousetrap which required more effort to use and achieved exactly the same thing, thus the lack of market penetration.  A few publications did adopt it but adoption was never widespread and it was clear it was less understood than the common “!?”, “????” etc although it did find a niche in chess where an interrobang is a legal move of questionable merit.

The interrobang is used to convey in pure text those layers of meanings provided by non-verbal clues such as facial expressions or tonal variations. 

Most punctuation marks are ancient but the interrobang is novel in being relatively new.  Mr Speckter’s idea was that what was needed in pure text advertisements was a symbol which could convey the feeling implicit in a surprised rhetorical question (the classic example of which is probably (really‽).  In TV or print advertising using images this was transmitted using facial expressions or vocal intonations but in pure text, this wasn’t always immediately clear.  For centuries, people had been using work-arounds like “?!”, “!?” or “????” but what he wanted was something more elegant.  His interrobang was certainly that and some academics acknowledged its utility but adoption was patchy because it was never integrated into the standard character-set of the typewriter keyboards of the era.  There were a few supporting gestures, most notably in 1967 when ATF (American Type Founders) included it in Richard Isbell’s (1924-2009) Americana typeface (the company’s last type cut in metal) and the next year it was available on some Remington typewriters, followed some years later by Smith-Corona typewriters but generally the industry ignored the innovation.  Crucially, IBM declined to add the interrobang to the golfballs used on their then dominant Selectric range of typewriters or their then embryonic word-processing programs.

Interestingly, nor was it included when a digital version of the Americana typeface was released and nor did it make it to the standard keyboards which IBM, Apple and others began to offer from the late 1970s although for nerds who did their own keyboard mappings, such things were sometimes possible.  Adoption has been limited and will remain so until included on standard physical keyboards (which seems unlikely) and there’s no evident demand for the symbol to be added to virtual implementations.  That said, it is in a number of fonts including Amplitude Wide Bold, Fritz Robusto, Constantia and Fontesque Sans so it’s there to be used although, as any form of communication relies on both parties sharing the same understanding of what a symbol denotes, it’s useful only of the recipient knows what it means.

There are interrobang emojis which makes perfect sense but using the glyph is possible on most platforms if not effortless.  In Microsoft Office for example, using the TrueType font Wingdings 2 it’s invoked by pressing the key marked with a tilde.  That’s not too bad but under iOS you have to edit the keyboard so you really (really‽) have to want to make the point:

(1) Copy an interrobang symbol of choice

(2) Launch the Settings app and choose General

(3) Tap Keyboard

(4) Select Keyboard

(5) Tap Text Replacement

(6) Tap the + symbol in the upper right corner

(7) Paste the interrobang symbol in the phrase field

(8) Type ?! in shortcut field

(9) Tap Save