Interrobang‽ YES!!!

 

I’ve just run across the Perfect Punctuation for 2020/The Year of COVID and WTF.

 

It’s called the interrobang. It’s called that because in printer’s slang, an exclamation point is called a bang and (in the English language) the question mark ends an interrogatory sentence.

 

It looks like this: ‽ 

 

You can use it to express incredulity, confusion and other mixed emotions, I suppose.

 

Do I love you‽  What kind of question is that‽ 

 

WTF‽ 

 

Are you serious‽

 

Who’s the dumbass now‽ 

 

You could even use it, I reckon, as a double entendre (definition of double entendre: a word or phrase that is open to two interpretation, one of which is often risqué or indecent), as in the following examples:

1. From the movie Silence of the Lambs:

I do wish we could chat longer, but… I’m having an old friend for dinner.  (‽)

In this example, Hannibal Lecture is a cannibal and actually having his friend for dinner, instead of just having his friend over for dinner.

2. Children make nutritious snacks.  (‽)

Similar to the last example, this statement could be interpreted to mean that children are making nutritious snacks or that eating children makes a nutritious snack.

…but in the above double entendre instances, the interrobang serves as an observer’s (or author’s, or editor’s) commentary on the assumed situation or the sentence structure, which might be a bridge too far…

 

Heretofore, I always punctuated this way (?!) to express incredulity, confusion and other mixed emotions.

 

The interrobang reduces the finger work by one stroke, and it’s pure genius!

 

It isn’t new. It just fell out of use until emoticons and 2020 arrived to lend it some serious support for being relevant again.

 

The interrobang even has its own Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/Interrobang-24172098749

 

So I looked it up in the Unicode and claimed it as an oft-used symbol, so I don’t have to go hunting for it again the next time I use it.

 

Yeah… the interrobang is my newest writing helper.  I like it a lot!