I have a friend who I can count on to know the meaning of any word thrown at her. But to my surprise, I recently stumped her with “interobang.” An interobang is a little used punctuation mark combining a question mark (also called the interrogative point) and an exclamation mark (which typesetters refer to as a bang). That’s it to the right. It was introduced in 1962 by Martin K. Speckter as a short hand punctuation for statements where neither mark alone exactly served the writer (as in “She said what?!”) As a silly extension, the reverse and upside down interrobang (combining ¿ and ¡), suitable for starting phrases in Spanish, is called a gnaborretni (interrobang backwards).
Holy Crap! I have a sorted history of getting crushes on things – and I’m pretty sure I’m in LOVE with the interobang…
Wow, talk about your Big Bang of Punctuation. It’s an emoticon onto itself.
I never knew about the interobang; I’ve always been a “?!” type of girl. perfect.
I hope to see some cool interobang stuff on Etsy. In fact, I’m off to search right now!
Well, you stumped me, too, and I’m always using both the question mark and bang, so this is a fabulous find indeed.
Thanks!
Anitra
PS Sure glad I saw the Etsy Forums thread about blogs!