In honor of National Punctuation Day (my late mother would be so proud) http://www.nationalpunctuationday.com/ (and some of youse moran's would do well to bookmark this site), I offer for your consideration what may be the most elegant but underappreciated punctuation mark ever devised, the Interrobang, rendered here in Palatino typefont.
Invented in 1972 by Martin K. Speckter, and intended to replace the clumsy concatenation of ! + ?, or if you prefer, ? + !, the Interrobang brilliantly captures both the end-of-sentence verbal upswing of ValSpeak, as well as the spontaneous disbelief that is best expressed in the popular WTF!? And what better way to end a rhetorical question?! But alas, it is not yet supported by many text applications, like this one, where the character is displayed like this:
‽ ‽ ‽ ‽
But if it was supported, I'd use it all the time. Wouldn't you?!? ‽
© 2010 David ¡¿ Kinne
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David Brin
Rolling
Zoe FitzGerald Carter
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Wilson Diehl
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Comments
BUT, it is kind of cool and I would go for that.
David, you never ever cease to amaze me with your blogs on inventions and literary finds like this one.
Rated with hugs
:-)
Lezlie
i like Interrobang much better & would use it all the time ‽
I'm now capable of typing an entire paragraph without a single comma. It's my dream to someday see someone read one, fail to punctuate in their mind, and pass out. Bring on the interrobang, something else that will not bother or affect me. heh heh or ;-) I am a vewy vewy baaad girl. Thank you.
Where the heck is purple? She'd LOVE this!!
Somebody go get purple......
^R^
Now the only question is, where to put it ‽