The question mark (also known as an interrogation point, query, or eroteme) is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence. It can also be used mid-sentence to mark a merely interrogative phrase, where it functions similarly to a comma, such as in the single sentence "Where shall we go? and what shall we do?", but this usage is increasingly rare. The question mark is not used for indirect questions. The question mark character is also often used in place of missing or unknown data.
Origins
The symbol is generally thought to originate from the Latin quaestio, meaning "question", which was abbreviated to Qo. The uppercase Q was written above the lowercase o, and this mark was transformed into the modern symbol. Another hypothesis about the origin of the question mark proposes that the mark originated in the 9th century, when it appeared as a point followed by the curvy bit written slanted (similar to the tilde, although the tilde was tilted more upward to the right). The point has always indicated the end of a sentence. The curved line represented the intonation pattern of a spoken question, and may be associated with a kind of early musical notation, like neumes.
Spacing before question mark
Some people place a space between the end of their sentence and the question mark. This usage is thought to stem from the French language and is known as French spacing. In French a space is always placed before question marks, exclamation marks, as well as colons and semicolons (See Ponctuation at French Wikipedia). In English, however, 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. However, on closer inspection they are not full spaces, tending instead to be half to three-quarters the width of a space. These are not considered spaces; instead, this is simply a form of kerning used to make the text less cramped and thus easier to read. (For detailed discussion of spaces after a question mark, see Full stop.)
Variants in other languages and in history
In some languages, such as Spanish and Galician, typography since the 18th century has required opening and closing question marks; an interrogative sentence or phrase begins with an inverted question mark (¿) and ends with the question mark (?) (see more on usage in Spanish). However, this orthographical convention is often disregarded in quick typing and where the inverted character is not easily available from computer keyboards. In Greek and Church Slavonic, a semicolon (;) is used as a question mark. In Arabic, which is written from right to left, the question mark "؟" is mirrored. The question mark is also used in modern writing (though not required) in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
The rhetorical question mark first appeared in the 1580s and was used at the end of a rhetorical question. It was the reverse of an ordinary question mark, so that instead of the main opening pointing back into the sentence, it opened away from it. This usage gradually disappeared in the 1600s. However, there has been recent discussion about re-implementing the rhetorical question mark.[verification needed]
Computing
In computing, the question mark character is represented by ASCII code 63, and is located at Unicode code-point U+003F. The full-width (double-byte) equivalent, ？, is located at Unicode code point U+FF1F.
The question mark 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 "?" is 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. The inverted question mark corresponds to Unicode code-point 191 (U+00BF), and can be accessed from the keyboard in Microsoft Windows by pressing AltGr-/ or by holding down the Alt key and typing either 1 6 8 (ANSI) or 0 1 9 1 (Unicode) 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 compose 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, ʔ, (which resembles "?" without the dot), and corresponds to Unicode code point U+0294, Latin letter glottal stop.
In computer programming, the symbol "?" has a special meaning in many programming languages. In the C, "?" is part of the ?: operator, which is used to evaluate simple boolean conditions. In C# 2.0, the "?" modifier and the "??" operator are used to handle nullable data types. In the POSIX syntax for regular expressions, such as the one used in Perl and Python, ? stands for "zero or one instance of the previous subexpression", i.e. an optional element.
In many web browsers, "?" is used to show a character not found in the program's character set. This commonly occurs for apostrophes and quotation marks when they are written with software that uses its own proprietary non-standard code for these characters. Some fonts will instead use the Unicode Replacement Glyph (U+FFFD, �), which is commonly rendered as a white question mark in a black diamond.
The generic URL (Universal Resource Locator) syntax allows for a query string to be appended to a resource ___location in a web address so that additional information can be passed to a script; the query mark, ?, is used to indicate the start of a query string. A query string is usually made up of a number of different field/value pairs, each separated by the ampersand symbol, &, as seen in this url: example.com/login.php?username=test&password=blank.
Linguistics
In linguistics, the question mark is prepended to strings to show that the linguist cannot determine whether they are well-formed or not. It is used similarly to the asterisk, which marks strings that are clearly ill-formed. It may be doubled to show greater uncertainty, or combined with the asterisk to show that the string is most likely ill-formed but that there is room for doubt.
Chess
In algebraic chess notation, "?" denotes a bad move, and "??" a blunder. For details see punctuation (chess).
Mathematics
In mathematics "?" commonly denotes Minkowski's question mark function.
Trivia
- A giant aquatic creature in the shape of a question mark appears several times in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. The name given to it is "The Great Unknown".
- In the spy-spoof film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery the film's villain Dr. Evil alludes to the fact that his father would often claim that he invented the question mark during his many drunken tirades.
- An American superstition that movies or television shows with question marks in the title do poorly at the box office has made many studios shy away from the punctuation mark. This has caused many works to be retitled when adapted for American cinema, such as the book Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which was retitled Who Framed Roger Rabbit (without the question mark) for the big screen.
- The British television series Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? dropped the question mark when it was adapted for American television. The show was, however, a huge success in the UK, even with the question mark in place.
- The Riddler, a Batman villain, uses the question mark as his logo, and has a question mark-covered costume.
- In Doctor Who, the Fifth Doctor's, Sixth Doctor's and Seventh Doctor's costume signature was a question mark.
- An episode of Lost was titled ?.
- Using multiple question marks at the end of a sentence is considered improper (aka "What???"). If the need for urgency or illustration of higher confusion is needed, an exclamation point and a question mark should be used ("What?!").
References
- Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, Period Styles: A Punctuated History
- M. B. Parkes, Pause and effect: an introduction to the history of punctuation in the West
See also
External links
- The question mark and indirect questions
- Keyboard Help - Learn how to easily create world language accent marks and other diacriticals, including the inverted question mark, on a computer.