The inverted question mark, , and inverted exclamation mark, , are
punctuation
Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
marks used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences or clauses in
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
and some languages which have cultural ties with Spain, such as
Asturian and
Waray languages. The initial marks are mirrored at the end of the sentence or clause by the 'ordinary'
question mark
The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages.
History
In the fifth century, Syriac Bible manuscripts used ques ...
, , or
exclamation mark
The exclamation mark, , or exclamation point (American English), is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks the end of a sentence, f ...
, .
Inverted marks are supported by various standards, including
ISO-8859-1
ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1 ...
,
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
, and
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
. They can be entered directly on keyboards designed for Spanish-speaking countries.
Usage
The inverted question mark is written before the first letter of an interrogative sentence or clause to indicate that a question follows. It is a rotated form of the standard symbol "?" recognized by speakers of other languages written with the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
. A normal question mark is written at the end of the sentence or clause.
Inverted punctuation is especially critical in Spanish since the syntax of the language means that both statements and questions or exclamations could have the same wording.
"Do you like summer?" and "You like summer." are translated respectively as and (There is not always a difference between the wording of a
yes–no question
In linguistics, a yes–no question, also known as a binary question, a polar question, or a general question is a question whose expected answer is one of two choices, one that provides an affirmative answer to the question versus one that provid ...
and the corresponding statement in Spanish.)
In sentences that are both declarative and interrogative, the clause that asks a question is isolated with the starting-symbol inverted question mark, for example: ("If you cannot go with them, would you like to go with us?"), not This helps to recognize questions and exclamations in long sentences.
Unlike the ending marks, which are printed along the
baseline of the text, the inverted marks (¿ and ¡)
descend below the line.
History
In 1668,
John Wilkins
John Wilkins, (14 February 1614 – 19 November 1672) was an Anglican clergyman, natural philosopher, and author, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death.
Wilkins is one of the fe ...
proposed using the inverted exclamation mark "¡" as a symbol at the end of a sentence to
denote irony. He was one of many, including
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' wa ...
, who felt there was a need for such a punctuation mark, but Wilkins' proposal, as was true of the other attempts, failed to take hold.
Inverted marks were originally recommended by the ''
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy ( es, Real Academia Española, generally abbreviated as RAE) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with ...
'' (Royal Spanish Academy), published in the second edition of the (Orthography of the Castilian language) in 1754 recommending it as the symbol indicating the beginning of a question in written Spanish—e.g. ("How old are you?"). The Real Academia also ordered the same inverted-symbol system for statements of exclamation, using the symbols "¡" and "!".
These new rules were slowly adopted; there are 19th-century books in which the writer uses neither "¡" nor "¿".
Adoption
Some writers omit the inverted question mark in the case of a short unambiguous question such as: ("Who comes?"). This is the criterion in
Galician and formerly in
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
. Certain Catalan-language authorities, such as
Joan Solà i Cortassa
Joan Solà Cortassa ( Bell-lloc d'Urgell, 10 January 1940 — Barcelona, 27 October 2010) was a Spanish linguist and philologist. He was professor of Catalan language and literature at the University of Barcelona from 1984 onwards, and vice pre ...
, insist that both the opening and closing question marks be used for clarity. The current IEC prescription for Catalan is not to use the inverted marks.
Some Spanish-language writers, among them Nobel laureate
Pablo Neruda
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
(1904–1973), refuse to use the inverted question mark.
It is common on social media to omit the inverted question mark since it saves typing time. Some also use the ending symbol for both beginning and ending, like this: . Others may even use both the opening and closing question marks, but at the end of the sentence, giving or . Given the informal setting, this might be unimportant; however, teachers see this as a problem, fearing and claiming that contemporary young students are inappropriately and incorrectly extending the practice to academic homework and essays. (See .)
Mixtures
It is acceptable in Spanish to begin a sentence with an opening inverted
exclamation mark
The exclamation mark, , or exclamation point (American English), is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks the end of a sentence, f ...
("¡") and end it with a question mark ("?"), or vice versa, for statements that are questions but also have a clear sense of exclamation or surprise such as: ("And who do you think you are?!"). Normally, four signs are used, always with one type in the outer side and the other in the inner side (nested) (', '
[ RAE']
)
Unicode#Versions, Unicode 5.1 also includes , which is an
inverted version of the interrobang, a nonstandard punctuation mark used to denote both excitement and a question in one glyph. It is also known as a "gnaborretni" () (
interrobang
The interrobang (), also known as the interabang (often represented by any of ?!, !?, ?!? or !?!), is an unconventional punctuation mark used in various written languages and intended to combine the functions of the question mark, or interro ...
spelled backwards).
Computer usage
Encodings
and are both located within the
Unicode Common block, and are both inherited from
ISO-8859-1
ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1 ...
:
*
*
The characters also appear in most
extended ASCII
Extended ASCII is a repertoire of character encodings that include (most of) the original 96 ASCII character set, plus up to 128 additional characters. There is no formal definition of "extended ASCII", and even use of the term is sometimes critic ...
encodings.
In Windows, an inverted question mark is valid in a file or directory name, whereas the normal question mark is a
reserved character
A filename or file name is a name used to uniquely identify a computer file in a directory structure. Different file systems impose different restrictions on filename lengths.
A filename may (depending on the file system) include:
* name &ndas ...
which cannot be used.
Typing the character
![Left side of modern US-International keyboard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Left_side_of_modern_US-International_keyboard.JPG)
and are available in all
keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.
is the actua ...
s for Spanish-speaking countries. Smart phones typically offer these if you hold down or in the on-screen keyboard. Auto-correct will often turn a normal mark typed at the start of a sentence to the inverted one.
On systems with an
AltGr
AltGr (also Alt Graph) is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards (rather than a second Alt key found on US keyboards). It is primarily used to type characters that are not widely used in the territory where sold, such as foreign c ...
key (actual or emulated via
right Alt key
AltGr (also Alt Graph) is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards (rather than a second Alt key found on US keyboards). It is primarily used to type characters that are not widely used in the territory where sold, such as foreign cur ...
) and Extended ( or 'International')
keyboard mapping
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.
is the actua ...
set, the symbols can be accessed directly, though the sequence varies by OS and locality: for example on Windows and
US-International
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden t ...
, use and ; on
Chrome OS with UK-Extended, use and .
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Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...
, , , ,
, -
, Linux
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HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
, ,
, ,
, -
,
LaTeX
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
,
,
See also
*
Spanish orthography
Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English, having a relatively consistent mapping ...
References
{{navbox punctuation
Spanish language
Punctuation
Interrogative words and phrases
Catalan language