21 November 2008

Interrobang. (‽)

Chasing down something that John Hodgman once said somewhere, I finally Wikipedia'd the interrobang. It looks like this:



Although I think Hodgman realized that the symbol doesn't take up enough space to get across the sense of astonished wonder conveyed by the a string of ?'s and !'s, or by the word “interrobang” all by itself in a footnote, in capital letters.

P.S. I think Hodgman did pick this use of the interrobang from David Foster Wallace, who used the footnoted “?!” in several essays.

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