The interrobang

The name of this diacritical is a new one on me: the interrobang, the conflation of a question mark, and an exclamation mark. Once you know what it is, the name makes total sense: asking a rhetorical question, including the shock that this [idea, proposal, action] could even be suggested. Proposed by ad man Martin K. Speckter in a 1962 TYPEtalks magazine article, this diacritical was called interrobang as a conflation of the Latin, 'interrogatio', (i.e. rhetorical question/cross-examination), and the printer's 'bang', or exclamation mark (99 Percent Invisible, 2018).

The interrobang will rarely be used in academic writing as it carries with it a wealth of emotion. It is not an objective and balanced piece of punctuation: it carries a WTF indicator (also not generally used in academic writing 😂). Interrobangs tend to be used in marketing and social media as two discrete pieces of punctuation (?!) as opposed to the interrobang itself, which is a single character (‽).

There are circumstances when we may use the interrobang in academic writing though: when we are either drawing on, or reporting verbatim the words of others. We may, for example, use it in content analyses, findings, reporting actual interviewees words, and possibly in literature review quotes.

Interestingly, the interrobang is also used in chess, "to represent a dubious move, one that is questionable but possibly has merits" (Wikipedia, 2024). Interesting how the meaning has already shifted in chess from a straight out dumb idea to focusing more on the shock end.

It is not only language that is fascinating: diacriticals are too!

Sam

References:

99 Percent Invisible. (2018, July 10). Episode 314: Interrobang. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/interrobang/

Wikipedia. (2024a). Interrobang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang

Wikipedia. (2024b). Proposed Interrobangs [Creative Commons 3.0 image]. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Proposed-interrobangs-from-type-talks-march-april-1962-drawn-by-jack-lipton-of-martin-k-speckter-associates-inc-iaqgraphicdesign.png