No, the interrobang is not a new style of violent interrogation akin to waterboarding. It is a punctuation mark created by a real Mad Man, advertising executive Martin K. Speckter in 1962. A combination of the question mark and exclamation point, it is used at the end of a sentence to convey astonishment, disbelief or to ask a rhetorical question.
The word itself comes from a combination of the printer’s jargon for the question mark “the interrogation point” and the exclamation point — the “bang.” Unfortunately, the use of an interrobang at the end of the question in the headline is appropriate, since the fact that we are torturing prisoners is astonishing, unbelievable, and unfortunately true as Jane Mayer's appalling book, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” proves beyond a doubt. Perhaps we will read a headline that ends with an interrobang someday that says "Bush Administration Officials Arrested For War Crimes!?"
Speckter's new punctuation mark never caught on, even though Specter used it in ads his agency created for accounts like The Wall Street Journal. Seems much more appropriate to use for a tabloid though.
It actually appeared on a typewriter (not however the Hermes model used by Douglas Adams that is currently up for auction) in the 60s. It was on a Remington that I’d like to add to my collection of Empires, Royals, Olivettis, Hammonds, Olivers, Smiths and Franklins. (Yes, I am afflicted with the collecting bug, and as a writer, typewriters speak to me.
And typographers include it with some fonts. It’s even available on many computers. On a Mac, four different versions can be found in the wingdings 2 font. Simply hit the ` ~ key, the ] } key, the 6 ^ key, or the - _ key and you'll be able to add this unusual punctuation to your documents.
I have to say, I don’t like the use of it in advertising. It’s kind of cheap, like the star burst, which is hated by creatives and loved by clients everywhere. In fact, a rather amusing ad was posted today to adsoftheworld by an agency in Columbia that addressed just this issue of the star burst. You can see it below — it adds to my collection of print ads that use a toilet as the location of the action.
However, I do think the interrobang works well in comic books, and one typographer has created a
variation of the interrobang for the Fritz font that I like very much, seen at right. And I do think the more traditional(!) interrobang works well in a
tabloid. Both are less formal venues. Which brings me to this venue: while the interrobang exists in some Unicode fonts, I can’t seem to be able to use it here except as a graphic. Too bad.
Then there is the symbol that appears almost entirely on the web: the copyright question mark. I have yet to determine its proper use though. Unlike copyleft, which offers up the usage of the material for non-profit use with proper attribution, I assume the copyright question mark is used when a web publisher uses material of uncertain copyright status, and wishes to make that known.
So what would a copyright interrobang mean?
