Interrobang

The sign was invented in 1962 by the head of the New York Advertising Agency, , who reported the invention in his own magazine TYPEtalks Magazine ^[1] . It was intended to indicate a rhetorical question , most of which in English (especially isolated, that is, outside the text environment) are also exclamations.

The mark was first made in 1966 as part of the Americana typographic headset , produced by the Association of American Typefounders (ATF). Two years later, Remington Rand included it in a set of signs for its typewriters, commenting in press releases that the sign "is the best expression of the incredibility of modern life." In 1996, designers from New York Art Studio developed his styles for all the typographic headsets of their collection.

This sign was most actively used in the American media of the 1960s, but later interest in it began to fade, so now it is more a visiting card of American typography, and not a really used symbol. Although the gap in English punctuation, which Martin Specter suggested, was not filled in any other way.

The mark is present in the Unicode standard from its very first version and is supported by the headsets Arial Unicode MS , Calibri , DejaVu , Lucida Grande and many others.

The author’s name for the interrobang sign combines the beginning of the Latin word interrogātīvus (“interrogative”) and the English word bang (interjection “bam!”, “Bang!”, “Bam!”), Which in the jargon of American proofreaders denotes an exclamation point. Specter chose this word from a series proposed by readers of his journal, indicating that although there are more faithful ones ( exclarotive , exclamaquest ), they are not as energetic as the interrobang. The French proposed another name for this sign - exclarrogatif , built from the French words interrogatif ("interrogative") and exclamatif ("exclamatory").

In traditional Russian punctuation and typography, this sign is not used; its existence is mentioned only when listing printing oddities. At the same time, they sometimes reproduce the English name ( Inter-Bang ), sometimes they try to invent something on the basis of Slavic words ( inconclusive ^[2] , rhetorical sign ).

Examples of the hypothetical use of the interbank in the Russian text:

• I can only see in a new splendor / Dreams of wilted beauty‽ (V. A. Zhukovsky)
• Who did not curse station rangers, who did not abuse them бра (A.S. Pushkin)
• What a lie, what a strength / You who have passed will return‽ (A. A. Blok)

An inverted inter-bang ( ⸘ ), suitable for starting phrases in Spanish , Galician and Asturian , which use inverted question and exclamation marks , is called gnaborretni ( interrobang backwards) ^{[3] [4]} . However, in the traditional punctuation of these languages, a combination of question and exclamation marks (¿¡Verdad !? or ¡¿Verdad ?! [True ?!]) is used instead ^[5] .