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The question mark, which is a punctuation mark (also known as an interrogation point, query, or eroteme) represented by "?", can replace the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence. It can also be used mid-sentence to mark simple interrogative phrases, where it functions similarly to a comma, such as in the sentence "where shall we go? and what shall we do?", even though this usage is increasingly rare. The question mark, however, is not used for indirect questions. An inverted question mark looks like ¿.

Convention[edit | edit source]

Some people place spaces between the end of their sentence and question marks. The French language has influenced this extra usage. The French always add a space before question marks, exclamation marks, colons, and semicolons. In English the insertion of this extra blank space is generally considered bad form. The Oxford English Dictionary specifies that no space should precede the question mark. Some English language books may appear to have these spaces. But if you look closely, you will see that they are only half to three-quarters as wide as a normal space. They could have just been a convention used by typesetters to make the text feel less cramped.

The origin[edit | edit source]

The question mark began, not when people first started asking questions (a common misconception), but when people started writing questions. It likely began with a Greek philosopher, who asked questions to themselves, which is a bit crazy. It also might have originated from the all mighty retards whom always question everything and there stupidity might have lead to the parents giving them a crayon and them drawing a retarded symbol which is know the QUESTION MARK which symbolizes all dumbasses and their question asking.

This symbol, which is generally thought to originate from the Latin quaestio, meaning "question", which was abbreviated to Qo, was hypothesised to have been first created in the Middle Ages. The first inquisitors write the uppercase Q above the lowercase o, which eventually transformed into the modern symbol. There is another hypothesis about the origin of the question mark that proposes that the mark originated in the 9th century, when it appeared as a point followed by the curvy bit written slanted. (It was similar to the tilde that was tilted more upward to the right.) The point always indicated the end of the sentence. The curved line represented the intonation pattern of a spoken question, associated with a kind of early musical notation, like neumes.

Variants in other languages and in history[edit | edit source]

In some languages, such as Spanish and Galician, typography since the 18th century has required opening and closing question marks where an interrogative sentence or phrase begins with an inverted question mark (¿) and ends with the question mark (?). Keyboard manufacturers should make an inverted question mark key so this orthographical convention won’t be so easily disregarded in quick typing because the inverted character is not easily typed in computer keyboards. The Greek and Church Slavonic language used a semicolon (;) instead of a question mark. The question mark "؟" is mirrored in Arabic. The question mark is also commonly used in modern Chinese, Korean, and Japanese writing, though it is not always required.

The rhetorical question mark first appeared in the 1580s and was used at the end of a rhetorical question. Its creators decided to use the reverse of an ordinary question mark, so that instead of the main opening pointing back into the sentence, it opened away from it. The usage gradually disappeared in the 1600s.

How do I use it?[edit | edit source]

Why, you just did! Just slap it on to the end of a sentence that sounds like a confused and yearning plea for knowledge. Accompany this with an upward inflection. Use it rhetorically to make people feel stupid ("Can you ask me a question? I'll have to think about it, asshole). It may also be used for right wing propaganda ("Aren't you an American???"). As well as comic uses like "what the fuck is a caterpillar doing on my wang?"

What if there are more than one?[edit | edit source]

Each additional ? up to three indicates rising levels of anger/excitement. Anything beyond that looks stupid or indicates insanity.

Examples:

  1. What time is it? Peaceful, normal tone.
  2. You're pregnant?? Surprise.
  3. You're also gay??? Shock, confusion, outrage.
  4. You also have AIDS???? Stupid, insane. (WARNING: DO USE A LOT!!!!)
  5. WHAT????? shows major stupidity due to the law uf dumbassery.

Computing[edit | edit source]

In computing, the question mark is represented as a Unicode and ASCII character 63 or 0x003F. It is often utilized as a Wildcard Character - a symbol that can be used to substitute for any other character or characters in a string. In particular, the "?" can be used as a substitute for any one character as opposed to the asterisk (*) which can be used as a substitute for zero or more characters in a string. Programmers chose the Unicode character 191 (0x00BF) to represent the inverted question mark which can be accessed from the keyboard in some versions (depends on ANSI codepage) of Microsoft Windows by holding down the [Alt] key and typing either 1 6 8 or 0 1 9 1 on the numeric keypad. In GNOME applications, it can be entered by typing the hexadecimal Unicode character while holding ctrl-shift, i.e.: ctrl-shift BF - ¿. In recent XFree86 and X.Org incarnations of the X Window System, it can be accessed as a composed sequence of two straight question marks, i.e. pressing <Compose> ? yields ¿. In the Mac OS, option-shift-? produces an inverted question mark.

The question mark is used in ASCII renderings of the International Phonetic Alphabet, such as SAMPA in place of the glottal stop symbol (which resembles "?" without the dot), and it corresponds to the Unicode character U+0294 Latin letter glottal stop [ʔ].

In computer programming, the symbol "?" appears in several programming languages. In C, the "?" part of the ?: operator is used for simple boolean conditions. The "?" modifier and the "??" operator can be used to handle nullable data types in C# 2.0. In the POSIX syntax for regular expressions, such as the one used in Perl and Python, the ? stands for "zero or one instance of the previous subexpression", i.e. an optional element.

Many web browsers use a "?" to show a character that is not found in the program's character set. This commonly occurs. It might happen less often if software didn't use its own proprietary non-standard code for apostrophes and quotation marks.

Controversy[edit | edit source]

There are some situations where it is questionable as to whether a question mark should be used, i.e. could the example sentence "Pass the salt, please?" be correctly suffixed with a question mark?. In syntactical terms the sentence qualifies as an interrogative sentence, which may have been the speaker’s intent. However, the person requesting passage of the salt might instead phrase the question as an imperative, maybe as a direction to "Pass the salt, please.". Some of the several authoritative style guides state that the question mark is not necessary in this case.

The author has a grammatical choice as to whether the punctuation in this sentence should be a question or a statement because they know the intended meaning of the speaker. These authors might be constrained by a rigid system of syntax imposed by punctuation authoritarians in their midst. The author's writing text where the meaning is unclear might have bigger problems than choosing punctuation.

There have been many concerning this question, and these possibly arose for the same reason that people may inflect an apparent question as a direction – a relic of our manner of speech. Or should that be, "a direction as a question"?

The authoritative usage could be influenced by the popular word processing program, Microsoft Word, when it automatically "corrects" sentences in the form of "Could you please pass the salt" to "Could you please pass the salt?". There are a few then, who would regard Microsoft Word as an authoritative mandator of style even though the program has no facility to divine the meaning of the text, while a human can discern it from the context. This doesn't even help at all to resolve this specific quandary. This contradicts the reason punctuation became popular in the first place: to indicate meaning between the textual words.

I just Abused it.

Chess[edit | edit source]

In algebraic chess notation, the "?" denotes a bad move, and "??" a blunder.

Mathematics[edit | edit source]

In mathematics "?" denotes the Minkowski question mark function. There's evidence to support that. Everyone is interested in mathematics.

Cinema[edit | edit source]

The American superstition that movies or television shows with question marks in the title will do poorly at the box office has made many studios shy away from the question mark. Many times, this has caused works to be retitled when adapted for American cinema.

  • The cinema adaptation of the book Who Censored Roger Rabbit? was retitled to Who Framed Roger Rabbit (without the question mark) for the big screen.
  • It is unclear whose idea it was to drop the question mark in the name of the British television series Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? when it was adapted for American TV.

Also, in the film "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery", Dr. Evil says that his deranged father used to make "outrageous claims" such as he had "invented" the Question mark.

Valley Girls and Other Symbol Abusers[edit | edit source]

Linguists have violent arguments about Valley Girls using it at the end of every sentence and even at random points in between.

Other punctuation criminals include the band members of Panic! at the Disco, who instead abuse the exclamation point, the Robin to ?'s Batman.

Prince first considered changing his name to ?, but was talked out of it by Michael Jackson.

See Also[edit | edit source]


To the people who have read the old version of this page: It doesn't matter what your answer is as long as you feel good about it.

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