Interobang!
David Solly
The manufacturer of my typewriter has included on one of its symbol balls a
character called an "interobang" which looks like a question mark
superimposed on a exclamation mark. I was wondering if anyone here knows
what it is used for or from which language it comes from. I have heard
about an exclamation mark being called a "bang" but I do not recall in
which context and I have never seen this combination of an exclamation
mark and question mark before. Thank you all.
David Solly
--
Charles A. Bigelow
The interrobang is indeed a combination of question mark (interrogation
point) and exclamation mark (exclamation point). Its semiographical function is
to mark a written utterance with surprise, astonishment, incredulity - just
what you'd expect a combination of question mark and exclamation mark to do.
The same meaning is often conveyed by the strings ?! or !?, but if one is
trying to express question and exclamation in equal measure, those strings have
the drawback of appearing to emphasize whichever is first. The interrobang
provides a unitary ligature of the two symbols. I have forgotten if I ever knew
where it first arose - I suspect in 20th century comic strips - but I believe
that the first type designer to include it in a font was Richard Isbell, who
designed such typefaces as Americana for American Typefounders and Isbell for
ITC and probably thousands of pieces of lettering and automotive nameplates and
logotypes and other such stuff for Detroit iron, as his lettering design studio
was in Motown.
The interrobang has been officially recognized as an international character
and incorporated into the Unicode standard as character code 203D (in hex).
For readers who now want to try out interrobangs, I regret to say that I don't
know if Dick Isbell's interrobang is available anywhere, though I hope so (but
I just checked ITC Isbell and didn't see it), but *[begin minor puffery]
Microsoft Wingdings 2 contains four interrobangs, which go nicely with Lucida
Bright and Lucida Sans (hardly a coincidence, since the same designers did
those fonts). Also, Lucida Sans Unicode, with Windows NT, naturally enough
contains a Unicode interrobang, which is a different design than the ones in
Wingdings 2. [end minor puffery]*
***[Begin major puffery] Although it is a small thing, I should like to thank
Microsoft for having the "vision" to see that the interrobang is a symbol that
will be crucially needed in the future of electronic communication, and for
letting us [Bigelow & Holmes] include the thing in various fonts for MS.
[End major puffery]***
fonts distributed by MS.
Michael Morrell
: The manufacturer of my typewriter has included on one of its symbol balls a
The interobang (I've also seen it spelled "interrobang") is a character that
should be used more than it is. I don't know when it was invented, but some
dictionaries do list it. Its use is obvious: to express a combination of
excitement (!) and shock (?), or similar feelings expressed by the ! and ?.
I use it whenever I can.
Michael
Don Hosek
> ***[Begin major puffery] Although it is a small thing, I should like to thank
> Microsoft for having the "vision" to see that the interrobang is a symbol that
> will be crucially needed in the future of electronic communication, and for
> letting us [Bigelow & Holmes] include the thing in various fonts for MS.
"crucially needed"?! (I had to punctuate that way... ;-)
I rather doubt that an interrobang will even come into common
use, let alone be a required sort in written communication. It
seems to me that the tendency is towards a reduction in the
number of alphabetic and analphabetic symbols used in written
communication not an increase (mathematics excepted). It's been a
while since I inspected Unicode (last time I had looked it was
still in draft form) but does it include assorted "smileys"?
Certainly there's more call for those in electronic communication
than the interrobang.
I've never seen an interrobang so I don't know what it looks like
(and I'm not sure I'm correctly visualizing from the
descriptions). My guess is that its main appeal is for type
designers looking for a new shape to work with and the sorts of
people who insist on writing "Shakespear" and indicating emphasis
with letterspacing.
-dh
--
Don Hosek
dho...@ymir.claremont.edu
Quixote Digital Typography
909-621-1291
Charles A. Bigelow
>In article <1993Sep29.1...@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>, big...@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Charles A. Bigelow) writes:
[stuff deleted]
>> .... d the "vision" to see that the interrobang is a symbol that
>> will be crucially needed in the future of electronic communication....
>"crucially needed"?! (I had to punctuate that way... ;-)
Right on! The interrobang (ASCII version) in action!
[more deleted]
> It's been a
>while since I inspected Unicode (last time I had looked it was
>still in draft form) but does it include assorted "smileys"?
>Certainly there's more call for those in electronic communication
>than the interrobang.
"frown face" = Unicode 2639
"smile face" = Unicode 263A
"reverse (black) smile face" = Unicode 263B
Wingdings diverges from Unicode in this respect; it contains "smile face" [J],
"neutral face" [K], and "frown face" [L].
Michael Wang
>(and I'm not sure I'm correctly visualizing from the
>descriptions). My guess is that its main appeal is for type
>designers looking for a new shape to work with and the sorts of
>people who insist on writing "Shakespear" and indicating emphasis
>with letterspacing.
The ones I've seen have an exclamation point and a question mark
superimposed over each other such that they share a common "period".
In other words, they look something like this:
*
*****
* * *
* * *
* *
* *
* *
*
*
*
*
--
Michael Wang
mmw...@mv.us.adobe.com
Joerg Knappen
--JK
Ian Young
All this talk of interrobangs and smileys got me thinking. When I handwrite,
I used to quite often find myself trying to write smileys (I'm sure it's not
just me!) as ":-)". Now, I do it so often that the nose has pretty much
disappeared and the mouth is connected to the top eye. I've even found myself
doodling such things -- I'm no typographer, but I always end up doodling
letterforms for some reason! It struck me that smileys tend to get used as
punctuation, and that this simplified version make quite a good punctuation
character. So I got out CorelDraw, and in Lucida Sans (it seemed only
appropriate) typed "(;", turned it through 180 degrees and linked the
semicolon's tail with the top of the paren and, viola!
Any takers?
I.
Charles A. Bigelow
>?!` Do we need an inverted interobang fo spanish astonishment too !?
>
>--JK
Yes! It's so obvious, why has no one done it before? Submit this to the Unicode
Charles A. Bigelow
Obviously another important step forward in the evolution of written
communication. Just like Latin "ad" (to, toward, at) became "@" in medieval
scribal abbreviation.
Doug Merritt
>still in draft form) but does it include assorted "smileys"?
Unicode includes smileys for the simple reason of backward compatibility.
It includes both IBM PC character set smileys and Zapf dingbat smileys,
thus allowing conversion into and out of Unicode without loss of
information. In fact there ended up being a fair amount of such crud
added to Unicode in the interests of backward compatibility, which is
to say, sort of as political compromise even in instances where it
was otherwise arguable.
Doug
--
Doug Merritt do...@netcom.com
Professional Wild-eyed Visionary Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow
Unicode Novis Cypherpunks Gutenberg Wavelets Conlang Logli Alife HC_III
Computational linguistics Fundamental physics Cogsci SF GA VR CASE TLAs
Michael Shapiro
The "interobang" was an attempt by a type designer in the 1960s or 1970s
(I think -- it's buried in deep recesses of mind) to provide English with a
punctuation for the the exclamatory question ("You did what?!") with a
single character replacing the "?" and "!" characters. It never caught
on and like other tries to change the language, has pretty much
disappeared. I would bet you could find more about it in a complete book
of recent typography design.
--
INTERNET: msha...@netlink.nix.com (Michael Shapiro)
UUCP: ...!ryptyde!netlink!mshapiro
Network Information eXchange * Public Access in San Diego, CA (619) 453-1115
Anders Thulin
>The interrobang is indeed a combination of question mark (interrogation
>point) and exclamation mark (exclamation point). Its semiographical function is
>to mark a written utterance with surprise, astonishment, incredulity - just
>what you'd expect a combination of question mark and exclamation mark to do.
This seems to have varied a bit.
The only description I've seen (by the Swedish font designer Bo
Berndal) indicates it was inspired by the French 'point d'un ironie'
(with excuses for bad French) - a question sign turned to the right -
and intended to indicate that irony was being used.
The French sign seems to have been used mainly in polemical writing,
in cases where the ironical nature of a statement might otherwise be
lost. (Much like the irony parentheses sometimes used in Usenet and
email communication.)
>provides a unitary ligature of the two symbols. I have forgotten if I ever knew
>where it first arose - I suspect in 20th century comic strips - but I believe
>that the first type designer to include it in a font was Richard Isbell, who
>designed such typefaces as Americana for American Typefounders
Berndal also cites ATF as the first company to put it in a font,
although he doesn't say which one.
--
Anders Thulin a...@linkoping.trab.se 013-23 55 32
Telia Research AB, Teknikringen 2B, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden
Martin Knowles
> In article <28ennu$e...@rs6000.bham.ac.uk> i...@wcl-rs.bham.ac.uk (Ian Young) w
> >Ah, there seems to be some space on the News server, so I can post this now!
> >
> >All this talk of interrobangs and smileys got me thinking. When I handwrite,
> >I used to quite often find myself trying to write smileys (I'm sure it's not
> >just me!) as ":-)". Now, I do it so often that the nose has pretty much
> >disappeared and the mouth is connected to the top eye. I've even found mysel
> >doodling such things -- I'm no typographer, but I always end up doodling
> >letterforms for some reason! It struck me that smileys tend to get used as
> >punctuation, and that this simplified version make quite a good punctuation
> >character. So I got out CorelDraw, and in Lucida Sans (it seemed only
> >appropriate) typed "(;", turned it through 180 degrees and linked the
> >semicolon's tail with the top of the paren and, viola!
> >Any takers?
> >
> >I.
>
> Obviously another important step forward in the evolution of written
> communication. Just like Latin "ad" (to, toward, at) became "@" in medieval
> scribal abbreviation.
>
Same case <ahem!> with the ampersand (&). There was an article about it
in Font & Function last year. Essentially, it started out as the latin
and--which is "et", then it turned into its own ligature, and finally
into &. Some fonts' ampersands (American-Uncial comes to mind here)
actually do look like the et ligature -- while others retain close to
nothing of the et origin. I wonder how many other symbols started this
way...
........................................................
. Martin Knowles . Lightning Systems .~
. 11020 NE 64th St ..........................~
. Kirkland, WA 98033 . Developer of FontPower .~
. fon...@seanews.akita.com . Font Management System .~
....................®...................................~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Charles A. Bigelow
Knowles) writes:
>big...@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Charles A. Bigelow) writes:
[reference to interrobang deleted]
>> Obviously another important step forward in the evolution of written
>> communication. Just like Latin "ad" (to, toward, at) became "@" in medieval
>> scribal abbreviation.
>Same case <ahem!> with the ampersand (&). There was an article about it
>in Font & Function last year. Essentially, it started out as the latin
>and--which is "et", then it turned into its own ligature, and finally
>into &.
> I wonder how many other symbols started this way...
In the ASCII set, certainly these:
@ = Latin 'ad' (= "to", "toward", "at"...)
# = Latin 'n' with cross stroke, abbreviation of 'numerus' (= "number")
& = Latin 'et' (= "and")
~ = Latin (and descendants Spanish & Portugese) 'n' (or 'm') superscript
These were all common Latin abbreviations used by medieval scribes.
* = Greek 'asteriskos' (= "little star"); an icon, not an abbreviation
(this goes all the way back to the Library of Alexandria)
With less confidence, I believe:
$ = Spanish 'Peso' abbreviation (the peso was fairly common in the colonies in,
say, Daniel Boone's time, but was often called by the German name
"Taler" or "Thaler", and was worth about one deer, or "buck", according
to some historians.) $ is not "US" abbreviated as we often hear.
% = /00 or some such, denoting the denominator of a hundred-base fraction;
the name "percent" is Latin 'per centum', "per hundred")
Bernie Cosell
} ~ = Latin (and descendants Spanish & Portugese) 'n' (or 'm') superscript
Actually, it was a shorthand for a double-n. As I was told it, the Spanish
scribes took "anno" and began writing it:
n
ano
And the 'top n' became a squiggle after a while. I suspect this is what you
meant, although most folk might not have read that into 'superscript'.
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell cos...@world.std.com
Fantasy Farm Fibers, Pearisburg, VA (703) 921-2358
Don Hosek
> In article <1993Oct10.1...@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>, Charles A. Bigelow writes:
> } ~ = Latin (and descendants Spanish & Portugese) 'n' (or 'm') superscript
> Actually, it was a shorthand for a double-n. As I was told it, the Spanish
> scribes took "anno" and began writing it:
> n
> ano
> And the 'top n' became a squiggle after a while. I suspect this is what you
> meant, although most folk might not have read that into 'superscript'.
Actually it's a generic shorthand for 'n' regardless of it's preceding
letter. Thus the use of \~a etc. in Portuguese. I've seen Latin manuscripts
from the 16th C. which use this notation (actually a bar over the letter in
that particular case).