This morning I came across the existence of Interabang Books, which brought three thoughts to mind:
- Is the word itself a Geezer reference?
- Might the concept have had a better chance of catching on if it didn’t sound like something named by a 9-year-old?
- It is a hell of good name for a book publisher, though.
Comics I Don't Understand 
(alternately spelled “interrobang,” by the way; it seems somewhat appropriate that it has two accepted spellings)
More of a geek reference. I don’t think it was ever in the popular nomenculture. And to the extent that it ever was I haven’t noticed it being used less lately.
As for catching on…where would it catch on to? Outside of geekhood it doesn’t have much purpose does it?
Or is there some reference to it that I’m not familiar with?
Great name for a publisher though.
Well at the time, it was fresh-faced and full of promise, the punctuation mark the world had been waiting for and would soon wonder how it ever did without.
Granted, around the same time people were saying the same thing about New Math…
@CIDU Bill: “Well at the time, it was fresh-faced and full of promise, the punctuation mark the world had been waiting for and would soon wonder how it ever did without.”
Maybe the Segway would have lived up to its comparable pre-unveiling hype if it had been named “the Interrobang” instead. I mean, the punctuation world wasn’t really using the word much, and it would have been nice to give it a second chance at popularity, and anyone willing to ride around on a Segway would probably be even more excited and willing to ride around on an Interrobang. So, couldn’t hurt.
Oh… well, I remember New Math and that’s a geezer tag but I don’t remember interrobang (and like must people; I’m utterly convinced that if I don’t remember it then it couldn’t have ever actually been well-known). I heard of interrobang mostly in the 90s among computer geeks for … some reason. I didn’t know it had a “reformation” history or was ever known to the public.
So then, yes, a geezer tag is appropriate.
(A few months ago interrobang was a trivia answer that was the two-point edge putting my team in first place.)
It does exist as a Unicode character, U+03C3. Would it get through Word Press if I used it‽
Jajizi, I’m not surprised that a Unicode character works.
I’m more impressed that my Android keyboard offers ‽
I wonder whether anybody ever rode a Segway while wearing Google Glasses.
. . . and Esperanto . . .
…listening to a Sony MiniDisc player…
If you think New Math was bad, there was also New English.
This didn’t last nearly as long, but it gave me the odd experience of not being able to help my younger brother — only two years younger — with his homework because I was too old to have been taught it.
It was doomed. Physical keyboards were already standardized, so it’d never get its own key, and doing it with two keys is more work for minimal benefit – unlike accents, typing the characters consecutively will give the same effect, so the backspacing would be pointless unless you were at the margin…or you were doing it enough that it was going to vastly increase your paper usage.
It’d be a bit more useful for print than typing (since margins are more important), but even there it’s not useful enough to justify casting and storing the extra sorts.
Handwriting doesn’t really have either of those issues, but if it’s not used in print, why would anyone (other than typography geeks) even think of it?
I agree that it’s more a geek thing than a geezer thing.
I wonder what would have happened if it had been introduced in the Computer Age, when adding a new symbol is no big deal.
“I wonder what would have happened if it had been introduced in the Computer Age, when adding a new symbol is no big deal.”
Um… the cent sign &0162; issue?
“I agree that it’s more a geek thing than a geezer thing.”
…. not if it *actually* was talked about and a well known topic in the sixties. Which… apparently it was. (I always feel weird when I don’t recognize a geezer tag).
(I had always assumed it *was* introduced in the Computer Age and it was just a way of filling up unicode options. Which is why I originally thought this was a geek thing.)
arggh!…. the ¢ issue? The issue
We really need a preview options.
Bill – we’re still stuck with the standard keyboards, so it would be like so many other characters that are included in unicode points, but no associated key – except unlike the cent sign (or any other currency symbols other than whichever one is the local main one), degree sign, trademark symbol, or even card suits, there isn’t really much point in going out of the way to do it, since it’s not a standard symbol.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/interrobang/
Transcript of a great podcast iI just listened to. Personal synchronicity
What IS the deal with that cent sign? I never understood its omission.
I thought it did catch on. I used to use it occasionally.
Or better yet: What, it never caught on‽
Maybe the Dvorak keyboard should have had a cent sign and an interrobang sign — that could have been all that it needed to put it over the top! (At least for folks typing on their tablets in Esperanto, while wearing Google Glass and riding a Segway, listening to Sony minidiscs — but surely that’s a pretty big and prestigious share of the total market!)
What I heard is that in the limited space of keys and shift keys that they figure the caret was more important as it could be used in many coding languages to represent feed command. (Or maybe it was a line feed.)
Above being my understanding of the missing ¢ key….. (Not the interrobang)
“. . . and riding a Segway,” – does one RIDE a Segway or DRIVE a Segway? I s’pose it’s like RIDE a bike, even tho one is in control, like a driver is.
I think I saw a reference to the interrobang in an entirely different comic in the last couple days — maybe Barney and Clyde? — and it wasn’t even alluded to as a single superimposed glyph, just the two components in a row.
I have a friend who enters a question mark to stand for the word “question”, producing notes like “I have a short? to ask you about flea treatment” (on a cat care group). I rarely get it right on first reading.
There should be a space before the “?”; then it’d be easier for one’s brain to parse. As in, “I have a short ? to ask you about flea treatment”
Yes, but I am not going to make that suggestion!
Aha, nothing like Barney and Clyde, it was a rerun Basic Instructions!
The original keyboard interface(*) for coding the “APL” language used “backspace + overstrike” to compose many of the special function operators. This made me wonder whether the “interrobang” symbol might have been invented by a programmer, but when I looked up the preferred spelling, it turned out to be an advertising gag.
P.S. (*) – Basically an IBM Selectric with a special “APL” ball, hooked up as a remote terminal to an IBM mainframe.
P.P.S. Reading the example sentences proved that (at least for me) the superposed symbol simply does not register the same amount of meaning as sequential placement, which also offers alternative nuances, depending on the order used.
P.P.P.S. In chess notation, there is a clear difference between “!?” and “?!”. Using an interrobang would muddle this distinction.
No one is pedantically explaining the interrobang in comments. Is that even possible ?!
… and a real question: Have emoticons become synthetic new punctuation marks :^)
Berber: What do you mean by “synthetic”? All punctuation marks are synthetic, starting from the first time that people decided to put dots between written words, then spaces between written words, then putting dots in between sentences, then putting commas in to mark places to breathe… all punctuation was made up by people synthetically for specific purposes. Spoken language is a bit more organic — it seems like our brains are wired for it. But written language, certainly written language beyond simply phonetics of the sounds of spoken language — is synthetic from one end to the other.
Has it been noted here that “bang” by itself was in use for the exclamation point?
And before DNS and the format of URLs or structured host names was really in place, email and Usenet news could use explicit routing. A path was given, using single-word hostnames separated by exclamation marks. They were casually referred to as “bang paths”.
Berber says: “No one is pedantically explaining the interrobang in comments. Is that even possible ?!”
I’ll just note that the “Interabang” spelling was unfamiliar to me, and I think it is easy to see more of a set of familiar words related to questions and questioning in “interro-” than in “intera-“.
Tangentially, I hate reading or hearing people talk about “interrogating” something abstract like an attitude or presumption. I always feel like letting myself give a wiseacre response like “Oh, you wanna give it the third degree?” But seriously, for decades we’ve been able to urge “We have to question our assumptions!”. Why do we now hear “We have to interrogate our assumptions!”? [There was no interrobang there, btw.]
“P.P.S. Reading the example sentences proved that (at least for me) the superposed symbol simply does not register the same amount of meaning as sequential placement, which also offers alternative nuances, depending on the order used.”
. . . and how many of each . . .
“Has it been noted here that “bang” by itself was in use for the exclamation point? ”
Actually, I was very surprised to find out the the name of the interrobang originating with typesetters and publishers. I assumed it had to have originated with computer people where the use of “bang” for ! was inevitable. (Actually the “interro-” is un-computery; I’d have predicated the “whabang” or “quebang”; but the “bang” is un-typesettery….)
?!
Before it was called a “bang”, the exclamation point was called an “ex” (obviously, short for “exclamation point”). Arthur Marshall wrote a ragtime piano solo titled “Ham And !”. The correct pronunciation of this title is “Ham And Eggs”.
Typographers in England have a different slang name for the exclamation point, but it is not safe for work.
I figure I’m not the only one who will be hunting for MiB’s elusive term. It wasn’t that easy to find, so here is a link to a list of alternative names for “!”.
Thank you, Kilby.
Dean Kamen had much more important – and successful inventions than the Segway. His brother, Mitchell, who I went to high school with (he was a couple of years ahead of me) is a Type 1 Diabetic. Dean invented a variety of medical related devices including an insulin pump to make delivery of same easier and better.
I just use c for the missing cent sign – I guess there was a determination that nothing would be priced under a $1 any longer. I could save one in the same Notepad file as I have the £ symbol memorized for when I am posting to my craft friends in the UK and translating the cost of supplies or such here.