Saturday 8 September 2012

Interrobang?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! wtf‽

Watching a programme tonight (apparently it was called "QI") and they discussed a punctuation mark known as the interrobang.  This symbol combines ? and !, and is used in rhetorical questions.  How useful is that‽

The interrobang was first proposed by Martin K Speckter in 1962 in the magazine TYPEtalks.  It was subsequently included in the release of the Americana typeface in 1966, and there was even an interrobang key on some Remington typewriters by 1968.  During the 1970s it was possible to purchase interrobang keycaps and typefaces for certain Smith-Corona typewriters.
Ultimately.. the interrobang failed to become a standard punctuation mark.  However it is available in WingDings 2 (press the "]" key) as well as Calibri (the default Office 2007 font).  It is also a unicode character  - so you can get it in many applications by holding ALT and typing 8253.  The actual unicode encoding is U+203D however this can be converted by setting your windows calculator to scientific / programmer mode, setting the base to HEX and typing 203D - then switching back to DEC (gives 8253). In order for the character to display in html, you can use "& #8253;" (without the space).

There is even a dedicated website - would you believe it‽‽‽‽‽