Pub quiz...

[redhillian]

Hands up if you know what ‽ is...

ETA: Yes, it's an interrobang. An obscure and underused punctuation mark.

I happened to need one the other day, and was reminded that such a thing exists, but isn't used. Great, aren't they.

Comments

[irdm.livejournal.com]

It looks like and exclamation mark with a questionmark overprinted on it.

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Yes, but not waht it is - merely what it looks like

[irdm.livejournal.com]

and because I am strong with the pooter, I can cheat and then claim I knew it was an "interrobang" all along.

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

google-fu is a powerful thing.

[fearmeforiampink]

It's the most recent addition to punctuation, it just never got used. It's for when people emphatically ask a question like "What the hell do you think you're doing?!?" However, it just wasn't popular, probably because it looked crap, also, there's nothing really lost by using '?!?' or similar, or expressing the questioning with emphasis some other way.

I know that for the same reason I know that @ is actually a very old symbol (for amphorae, used by the greeks to keep track of how much wine they were getting through) - because it was a question on How2

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

doesn't matter how you knew, you knew.

[mrssshhh.livejournal.com]

An obscure and little-used character for an exclaimed question?

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Correct!

[phyrbyrd.livejournal.com]

An interrobang?

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Yup!

[phyrbyrd.livejournal.com]

Yay! Who else got it right?

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

most people - all comments should now be visible.

[phyrbyrd.livejournal.com]

Hands up who else knows this because they bought Eats, Shoots and Leaves...

[nattydreadi.livejournal.com]

a square

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Ah. Font failure. It's an interrobang.

[ash1977law.livejournal.com]

It's a cut - and under the cut is an 'interobang' (though I'm not sure of the spelling there)

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Indeed, but with a double r.

[shakalooloo.livejournal.com]

It's a black-outlined white square.

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Ah. Font failure. It's an interrobang.

[ed-fortune.livejournal.com]

INTERROBANG!

My favourite grammatical symbol that no one ever uses.

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Correct - great aren't they‽

[nakedsamuraiguy.livejournal.com]

It's a question mark humping an exclimation mark!

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Nearly, good description, but not the answer I was lookign for.

[annabellelaw.livejournal.com]

Is it the Blue Oyster Cult symbol?

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Not quite - their symbol can be found at: their official webpage.

This thing was an interrobang.

[vondage.livejournal.com]

It's an interrobang. Yay, points for me!

f xx

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Correct! Must be from good breeding.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

An interrobang?!

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Yup. The very thing.