Where Did The Question Mark & Exclamation Mark Come From?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 พ.ย. 2023
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SOURCES & FURTHER READING
History Of The Question Mark: historicallyirrelevant.com/po...
Short History Of The Question Mark: theliterarysalon.com/books/a-...
History Of The Exclamation Mark: bookriot.com/history-of-the-e...
Where Did The Question Mark Come From?: www.grammarphobia.com/blog/20...
Interrobang: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interro...
![ทททททททท #27 [หลุยส์ เค โตมายังไง ณ สระบุรี]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CaKoYw_Xmtg/mqdefault.jpg)
What comes to mind first for you when you think of a solitary question mark and exclamation mark? For me it's the blocks in Super Mario and the a alert enemy sign in MSG, hence why theyw ere in the video.
For "?" It's "huh" and "!" It's "ah!"
!?!?
I think of old hand lettered comics. Shrieks and bangs.
Hi.
In Russian & Ukrainian, the ?! seems to be used much more widely than in English.
- Adûnâi
"I am so happy?" sounds like a sarcastic way of asking why you should be happy in response to something someone said.
“I’m so happy?!” Sounds straight up psychotic
@@NBrixH¡¿I am so happy!? Sounds psychotic but weirdly Spanish...
IDK. "I'm so happy?" reads as confused to me.
Aww you're so happy!
I am so happy‽
It looks like a very Tumblr expression. I do like the suggestion that mirrored question mark indicates sarcasm
I am so happy⸮
Having an opening mark for questions is extremely helpful in Spanish and I wish English would adopt it. Specially for long questions.
Maybe it’s just dyslexia, but I find it very confusing when reading a long question that I didn’t know was one until the very end. So I have to go back and re-read it to make sure that I got the meaning of the question.
Also, having to read something aloud for a class that included a really long question that you didn’t realize was one until the very end and then having to do the “questioning-inflection” extra hard on the last syllable to hopefully communicate that it was supposed to be a question and that you read that whole thing in a neutral tone because you didn’t know before that point is a feeling that I will never forget. And I know it didn’t just happen to me.
In coloquial use, only using the closing one should be fine. I mostly only use the closing one when texting in Spanish unless the question is long anyway.
I do get that it would increase the amount of printing space necessary for some books and thus mess with typesetting and printing costs. Which is a fair concern and perhaps the main reason it has never been really pushed for as an official rule.
I wish it was acceptable as an optional rule though.
I would hate that
@@carinaslima ¿How come? ;)
I like this too, but let's take the "I am so happy example". Grammatically it should be: "Am I so happy?" so the question mark at the beginning is unnecessary. However with the growing amalgamation of Spanish culture into English through the United States, I could see this eventually being adopted.
It's also useful when only a part of the sentence has an interrogation 😁
@@Vendavalez IDK about them, but for me it's their graphical form and sometimes having punctuation in front of the sentence and sometimes not. As well as the possibility of having two wildly differently looking punctuation marks (well, ones are upside down...) right next to each other, belonging to two separate sentences.
As for the graphical form - I really don't like symbols that are simply some other symbol rotated or mirrored, and the look of sth stretching down below the normal text line, while not reaching its top, right before a capital letter being the opposite, feels very wrong to me, almost Klingon, lol.
When he said "it's just a theory", i could hear matpat saying "But hey, that's just a THEORY A LANGUAGE THEORY" 😂
I can kind of see how the question mark might represent the twists and turns of a question, then the poet came along and figured a straight line more represented the straightforwardness of an exclamation.
I imagine that the exclamation mark was created as a visual contrast to the question mark...
The world's two shortest telegrams came after Victor Hugo submitted his LES MISERABLES manuscript to his publisher. Hugo sent him a telegram with the message "?" The publisher replied with "!"
7:19 in my head that went like "that's just a theory, a NAME theory" and patrick's voice turned into the voice of matpat
I wish there were more marks. Like a mark for disdain or dislike, or disgust, etc
The need for these is exactly why we have emojis! 😂 ❤ 😉
Welcome emojis.
The origin I've heard fits in with the medieval one: It started by following the period with a more-or-less horizontal line that is imitative/suggestive of the vocal tone at the end of the sentence that is distinct from the dropped voice at the end of a normal assertion. For a question it looked like a very stretched-out tilde, whose end indicates the raised tone at the end of a question. For an exclamation it indicated the flat tone of an emphatic statement (as in "that's that!"). Both of these gradually rotated a quarter turn counterclockwise and stylized to the modern forms.
Everybody knows Dr. Evil's father invented the question mark.
The Latin word "quæstiō" actually denoted something one is trying understand. The Ancient Romans didn't have a separate word for "question", instead using circumlocutions like "that which I may ask".
As an American (in the south, if that matters) I've always called them an "exclamation point" and a "question mark" and never really thought about why one was a "mark" and one was a "point" lol, very interesting
As an American in the Midwest I learned them both as “mark”
@@beefbeef5342as a Brit, same
same
I’m from the Northeast and I’ve called ? a question mark and ! an exclamation point
Does anybody else say the ? as “Question Mark” and the ! as “Exclamation point?” I dunno, as an English native, that was what I was taught how to say these when I’m referring to them.
Yes! I learned it in school that exact way!
What I fi d weird is that the different theories are thousands of years apart. 2 of thosr can be easily invalidated by figuring out the oldest use of some form of the pointuation marks.
In America it’s called a “Question Mark” but an “Exclamation Point”
That's true, I can vouch for that. These names have been consistently used in the U.S. for at least half a century, if not longer. (Not sure what Canada uses.) And today I learned that "exclamation mark" is !'s name in the U.K. Who is it that calls "?" a question _point_ though? Never heard that name before in any context.
A Q mark and an Ex mark in Aus.
With cats, the ? Ocvurs when a cat is awake, alert, and happy. When a cat is startled, thsts when the ! Comes into play. When a cat is curious, they arevalso cautious, so they approach partly crouched and tale extended straight behind them but low to the ground in case they need to tur. & run.
I do like the idea ofvthe tilted tilde though.
In Spanish, the exclamation mark is sometimes called "Signo de Admiracion" (Admiration Mark)
"IACOPO" is pronounced "YACOPO", as is its modern equivalent "JACOPO", which is "Jacob" in English.
Alongside those, there have been other proposed end-of-sentence marks like the “love mark” (looks like two mirrored question marks to actually make a heart). There’s also the question comma and exclamation comma, which I think would be super useful in cases where it doesn’t feel like the sentence is quite over, but the phrase does need some emotional punctuation to it.
Punctuation is one of the biggest questions of grammar
Then there are more Marks. Firstly, I want to call the comma. (,)
It happens when we enumerate. A dog, a cat, a mouse and a guinea pig.
In German it is also used when we write two sentences together:
They are all animals, mice and guinea pigs are rodents.
Then there is the semicolon, half period, half comma. (;)
I pack shirts, t-shirts, pants, socks ; a car, a train, a plane and a submarine into my suitcase.
In English, numbers are written like this € 5,228.52
In German, numbers are written like this 5.228,52 €
I've always thought that English could benefit from using the upsidedown question mark (¿) and the upsidedown exclamation mark (¡) in the language. I think it would make reading the sentences a lot easier. We would use them the same way they're used in Spanish. I have also thought that it'd be neat if English had punctuation marks to indicate irony and sarcasm. I also think another punctuation mark called a "double comma" („) could come in handy to clear up some things when writing extremely long lists of items. This punctuation mark would make the long lists more aesthetically pleasing too. I would find long lists easier to read if this mark existed in English. I know the semicolon (;) exists and serves a similar purpose in English, but another mark for the same purpose could come in handy too. I think it could clean up some long lists and make them look nicer.
Nah, it just makes things clunkier, and increases the number of punctuation marks you have to use, without really adding any value.
Yesterday I was wishing there was a video on this exact topic, and then you immediately upload it?!
My favorite usage is the 3Q2E sandwich to express outrageous disbelief. It's usually used in the phrase "are you f*cking KIDDING me?!?!?"
“The Adventures of Tintin” comics use ! and ? really well to express surprise.
The tilde (~) is known in Spanish as "la tilde de la eñe", or simply eñe (enya), because of the way it modifies the "n" sound.
"Eñe" is the name of the letter ñ in Spanish.
In Swedish the ~ doesn't change any letters but is used on its own to mean "approximately".
That is in fact a mathematical sign@@francisdec1615
The way you wrote "enya" when it's "eñe" really shows the limitations of English. Would "enye" be seen as "eeny" or "enyay"? Using English to explain pronunciation is so terrible.
In spanish ~ is also called "virgulilla", "eñe" is the name of the letter ñ and it doesnt sound like "enya"
This was awesome! You have the coolest facts. ¡!
7:20 "A Language Theory! Thanks for watching.▶️"
What's interesting is that in Greek we use ! for exclamation but ; for questions. We never use the ? symbol which is interesting
The story I heard was that the question mark came from the word “quo” written vertically in the Middle Ages, eventually being abbreviated to qo in cursive, later being elided to a half Q and a dot for the o.
Exclamation point came from IO written vertically. Same story.
Well according to Aliester Crowley, they are the Hunchback and the Soldier. On the journey to enlightenment one must alternate between questions and bold assertions.
Everyone knows Dr. Evil’s father invented the question mark.
The inherent difficulty of implementing the "interrobang" is that the symbol/mark is not found on typing keyboards. Kind of hard to use the mark if it's not available for use. 😏
Really‽‽‽😆
@@ShEmDK It's not on my keyboard. Is it on yours or did you have to use an alternate settings function?
Did anyone else grow up calling them "question mark" and "exclamation point?" Or the other way around. I've never thought about it before, that I use mark for one and point for the other.
Isn't that interesting‽
Hrm... you know, we have 2 cats where I work... "rodent control" ... but, maybe I do need to pay more attention to their tails. Not physical attention, but visual attention. They both seem to trust me, as I am the architect of one of their fast-travel systems AND I usually keep their known hiding spots secret.
I feel like there shoul be more of these. There are way more tones in which you can say a sentence than exclamation or question. It'd be awesome if we had ones to express things like sarcasm, or fatigue, soothing, or even just simply the opposite of exclamation and question
9:26 Maybe that's because it's ugly as sin. I, for one, am glad it's not commonly used.
I had always though as a kid that the question mark looks kinda like a lowercase q with a dot underneath while exclamation mark looks like an upside down lowercase i. I haven't learned English at that point.
I wonder whether question and exclamation marks became more necessary as literacy became more popular. As more people were reading and doing so more privately, the marks were needed to replace not having a more experienced reader nearby who could help decide the intention of the work.
I thought about how written Chinese has punctuation words instead of marks, basically a symbol that indicates the sentence purpose.
I'm going with the cat theory - that one is just too much fun!
And in comic books all statements, no matter how mundane, must end in a question mark.
Along which axis do you believe a question mark to be symmetrical?
6:00 new theory: the question and exclamation mark are derived from Patrick's right and left eyebrow respectively
In Spanish the name of "!" is still "signo de admiración"
Wasn't expecting a GrayFace here LuL
YO! That's an amazing origin story!
(8:25) How is the question mark symmetrical?
Do you often say "uh" after you finish sentences normally or is that only when youre recording videos
I have the interrobang in my phone lol like i can just ‽
The interrobang mark would be useful for fast reading and writing but it kinda feels weak. It kinda just look like a stylized lowercase q.
Also the more question or exclamation marks the more stronger the sentence feels.
Like shouting "THERE!!!" sounds louder than "THERE!" and it grabs more attention.
Likewise with multiple question marks like "right???" sounds like you are really want to know more or uncertain than just "right?"
Even more dots strengthen the sentence about thinking deeper like "Hmm... let me think..." than just "Hmm, let me think."
This could be reason "WHAT?!" feels stronger and louder than "WHAT‽" because it contains more marks. You could just add more interrobang but it kinda looks more like question marks than a combination of them two. Maybe because the question mark by itself have the same height as the exclamation mark but wider due to its curves which makes the line longer and bigger. That's why exclamation marks are often specifically widen and filled out than usual in handwritten texts or images.
Maybe we need a thicker punctuation mark for both "!" and "?" ? Or maybe we could just shorten the "?" so that it becomes more equal in size with "!" ?
I've seen "/s" used at the end of sentences meaning to be ironic or sarcastic. It does indeed look like a backwards question mark!
Verry interresting & amuseing !!,
I like the cat's theory !!.
So what's neXt ?¿
Definitely the cat hypothesis, that's definitely the correct one
Another convincing theory regarding this is that these are the Arabic letters Ilef and Lam.
Lam has the easiest explaination: the letter Lamedh means prod, or cane.
Later Lamedh also aquired the meaning of student.
Hence Talmud in Hebrew means study and Arabic Talamidh means student.
Arabic being a language for the verry educated (the illustrious "third language" scholars learned).
They could adopt the letter as a geeky easter egg: "ل = ?".
Much like how the letter Y was adopted by the Romans.
In Arabic, the particle "إ " implies urgency:
"Come here" implies "at your leashure"
But:
"Hey come here" means"immediatly"
The theory has convinced me as "إ " and "ل" both do look like an exclamation and question mark.
Plus they are etymologically sound, plus these symbols where invented during the Arab golden age.
~My neighbour uses this "إ " before calling me:
To him: "I come here" means You come here now! ~
How confusing.
Qo, would likely said as /ko/ since Q where basically a third way to write /k/.
Have you watched "c" by the legend?
@@WhizzKid2012 By Misali? I have, but knew it years prior to it.
An interesting history of these marks.
I shall always see the dot as a cat's arse from now on.
talk about more punctuation signs like the , : ; etc.
The backwards question mark, Patrick, have you discovered the elusive sarcasm font? Which I would imagine now is rendered useless thanks to the prevalence of emojis.
American here who's not heard the term fullstop used for period, or if I did hear it I didn't make the connection. Though in using voice recognition to type this both words spelled out the same punctuation mark.
‽ is a programmed key on my keyboard. I use it frequently enough.
Dammit, I just made a comment about how it would be hard to introduce new punctuation due to font limitations, and now I find my machine happily copied and pasted that into my handy "Special Characters" file I keep on the desktop. I was pretty surprised.
@@flamencoprof It's also available on your phone's long-press for symbols under the question mark on the keyboard. (Android may require you to turn a setting on to extend the available symbols for long-press.)
7:20 you missed an opportunity to say “that’s just a theory, A NAME THEORY!”.
!? is the only correct order
?! has too wide gap between the dots
unless you rally want to emphesize that you're asking and then screaming (which mostly you don't do)
was hoping the interrobang would show up
Oddly I say question mark and exclamation point
2:58 if the tail is the mark's shape... what is the dot beneath it?
Now days we are loosing the "¿" in spanish, the everyday use of it in chats and social media is killing it. ¡Save the "¿"!
Interesting, but what does it mean when you combine question marks and exclamation marks? Does that make it super-loud inquisitive?!?!
There is a question mark over the origin of the question mark. Therefore the origin of the ? should be represented by its own symbol of a question mark in normal font followed by a question mark in superscript so that it appears as ?^?. Maybe also !^?.
In french it is "point d'interrogation" and "point d'exclamation".
Question marks make more sense for languages that don't differenciate grammatically these sentences, such as Portuguese or Spanish. other languages usage of it makes me curious
I'm guessing the apostrophe, comma, and quotation marks are in future videos
! = huutomerkki = shouting mark
I suppose that the origins of both the question and exclamation marks are....well...a question mark in themselves, is what I get from this video.
I made a band called "Triple Screamer" or simply "!!!"
There's another band called !!! or Chk Chk Chk.
i have usaly seen /s being used to represent irony more often then mirored ?.
waiting for pepole in 1000 years to wonder how they got irony marks
I didn't know English words for those. I knew the question mark because it is called in my native language too. ❤
And thats on period sis
Good.
!?
¿¡
‽
I Love You.
I Love You!
I Love You?
Quite a difference,
What is question mark
!s mean "new quest" and ?s mean "completed quest", but only if they're over people's heads. Wait, they don't do that in the real world?
🐈 😻 🐈⬛️ 🐱 created punctuation full stop ✋️
Not even a shout-out to Greek with our question mark :(
The ; is dying. People are using ? more often.
What about the greek question mark? It looks like this ( ; )
I’ll try to remember Irony mark = ؟
Nobody says "question point" ... Exclamation point, yes
(!) is irony/sarcasm indicator
/s
Emotion in general. But the inverted question mark is specifically irony. It's non-standard though.
Woah‽
¿ is not upside down. It's the opening question mark. And ? Is not regular, it's the closing question mark.
They come at the end of the sentence. Sad!
Nice.......😊
Nice! 😳
Nice? 🤔
Nice¿ 🤨
Nice video. ❤❤
For your next video I suggest you look into why saying “JUST THEORIES” is so problematic.
It is difficult to see people adopting any new characters or punctuation these days, considering the concern already expressed about young people not learning writing well because of the ubiquity of device use, and the limitations thereof with respect to fonts available. If you bitmap a new character for yourself nobody else's device will be able to display it. With a pen you can do anything.
Edit: - An earlier commenter has made me a liar by using ‽ just like that, dammit!
There's also ⸘ and 🙹 and 🙺 and 🙻
¡¿And Spanish?!
I still say cats…
‽
so the question mark is the tail of a cat what about the dot is it the bumhole of the cat
Þ
Mark finds this video fun and informative!? 😂