What's an Interrobang ‽

Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we're saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I'm Lauren Smyth, and I'm here to tell you about a great punctuation mark you've probbaly never used or even heard of: the interrobang. The purpose of the interrobang is to, well, make your sentences go out with both an interrogation and a bang. That was a pretty horrible pun. The interrobang is a combination glyph of an exclamation mark layered over a question mark, used to express shock, surprise, disbelief, confusion, and so on. It was first proposed in 1962, and as you've probbaly already guessed, it never really caught on. For one thing, it can't do anything a simple exclamation mark and question mark together can't do. From what I've seen, the mark is also a little hard to read, as the lines required to separate the question mark and the exclamation mark have to be pretty thin to be readable, otherwise it just kind of looks like an ink smear. Even if you figure out how to type and use the interrobang, you probably won't want to put this unique punctuation into anything formal. At least, not yet. That's your Grammar Minute! Visit thegrammarminute.com for more tips and tricks.