Question mark

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)
?
Question mark
U+003F ? QUESTION MARK (?)
¿ ؟
Inverted question mark
Small question mark Arabic question mark

The question mark ? (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in

interrogative clause or phrase in many languages
.

History

In the fifth century,

Syriac Bible manuscripts used question markers, according to a 2011 theory by manuscript specialist Chip Coakley: he believes the zagwa elaya ("upper pair"), a vertical double dot over a word at the start of a sentence, indicates that the sentence is a question.[2][3]

8th century punctus interrogativus from the Godescalc Evangelistary. (BnF NAL 1203, f. 6v.)

From around 783, in

ligatures.[6][7]

An 11th century punctus interrogativus; in the third line before "tamen". (Burgerbibliothek Bern, Cod. 162, f. 15r.)

From the 10th century, the pitch-defining element (if it ever existed) seems to have been gradually forgotten, so that the "lightning flash" sign (with the stroke sometimes slightly curved) is often seen indifferently at the end of clauses, whether they embody a question or not.[citation needed]

In the early 13th century, when the growth of communities of scholars (universities) in Paris and other major cities led to an expansion and streamlining of the book-production trade,[8] punctuation was rationalized by assigning the "lightning flash" specifically to interrogatives; by this time the stroke was more sharply curved and can easily be recognized as the modern question mark. (See, for example, De Aetna [it] (1496) printed by Aldo Manuzio in Venice.[9])

In 1598, the English term point of interrogation is attested in an Italian–English dictionary by John Florio.[10]

In the 1850s, the term question mark is attested:[11]

The mark which you are to notice in this lesson is of this shape ? You see it is made by placing a little crooked mark over a period.... The name of this mark is the Question Mark, because it is always put after a question. Sometimes it is called by a longer and harder name. The long and hard name is the Interrogation Point.

Scope

In English, the question mark typically occurs at the end of a sentence, where it replaces the

Question comma
):

"Is it good in form? style? meaning?"

or:

"Showing off for him, for all of them, not out of hubris—hubris? him? what did he have to be hubrid about?—but from mood and nervousness." — Stanley Elkin.[12]

This is quite common in

Spanish
, where the use of bracketing question marks explicitly indicates the scope of interrogation.

En el caso de que no puedas ir con ellos, ¿quieres ir con nosotros? ('In case you cannot go with them, would you like to go with us?')

A question mark may also appear immediately after questionable data, such as dates:

Genghis Khan (1162?–1227)

In other languages and scripts

Opening and closing question marks in Spanish

Opening and closing question marks

In Spanish, since the second edition of the Ortografía of the

inverted question mark
¿ and ends with the question mark ?, as in:

Ella me pregunta «¿qué hora es?» – 'She asks me, "What time is it?"'

Question marks must always be matched, but to mark uncertainty rather than actual interrogation omitting the opening one is allowed, although discouraged:[15]

Gengis Khan (¿1162?–1227) is preferred in Spanish over Gengis Khan (1162?–1227)

The omission of the opening mark is common in informal writing, but is considered an error. The one exception is when the question mark is matched with an exclamation mark, as in:

¡Quién te has creído que eres? – 'Who do you think you are?!'

(The order may also be reversed, opening with a question mark and closing with an exclamation mark.) Nonetheless, even here the Academia recommends matching punctuation:[16]

¡¿Quién te has creído que eres?!

The opening question mark in Unicode is U+00BF ¿ INVERTED QUESTION MARK (¿).

In other languages of Spain

Galician also uses the inverted opening question mark, though usually only in long sentences or in cases that would otherwise be ambiguous. Basque and Catalan, however, use only the terminal question mark.[clarification needed]

Solomon Islands Pidgin

In

Solomon Islands Pidgin
, the question can be between question marks since, in yes/no questions, the intonation can be the only difference.

?Solomon Aelan hemi barava gudfala kandre, ia man? ('Solomon Islands is a great country, isn't it?')[17]

Armenian question mark

Question mark in Armenian

In Armenian, the question mark is a diacritic that takes the form of an open circle and is placed over the last vowel of the question word. It is defined in Unicode at U+055E ◌՞ ARMENIAN QUESTION MARK.

Greek question mark

The

indirect questions
.

Mirrored question mark in right-to-left scripts

Mirrored question mark in Arabic and Perso-Arabic

In

bi-directional code AL: Right-to-Left Arabic) and U+2E2E REVERSED QUESTION MARK (With bi-directional code Other Neutrals). Some browsers may display the character in the previous sentence as a forward question mark due to font or text directionality issues. In addition, the Thaana script in Dhivehi
uses the mirrored question mark: މަރުހަބާ؟

The Arabic question mark is also used in some other right-to-left scripts:

. Adlam also has U+1E95F 𞥟
better source needed
]

Hebrew script is also written right-to-left, but it uses a question mark that appears on the page in the same orientation (e.g. את מדברת עברית?) as the left-to-right question mark.[21]

Fullwidth question mark in East Asian languages

The question mark is also used in modern writing in

fullwidth form in Chinese and Japanese, in Unicode: U+FF1F FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK.[clarification needed
] Chinese and Japanese also have a spoken indicator of questions, 吗 (ma) and か (ka) respectively, which essentially function as a verbal question mark. Because of this, in Japanese use of the question mark is optional with か. Thus the same sentence could be written both いいですか?('May I?') or いいですか。(Still 'May I?'), but usually, the question mark is used.

In other scripts

Some other scripts have a specific question mark:

  • U+1367
    ETHIOPIC QUESTION MARK
  • U+A60F
    VAI QUESTION MARK
  • U+2CFA
    COPTIC OLD NUBIAN DIRECT QUESTION MARK
    , and U+2CFB COPTIC OLD NUBIAN INDIRECT QUESTION MARK
  • U+1945 LIMBU QUESTION MARK

Stylistic variants

narrow non-breaking space before the question mark.[22] (e.g., "Que voulez-vous boire ?"); in English orthography, no space appears in front of the question mark (e.g. "What would you like to drink?").[23]

Typological variants of "?"

The rhetorical question mark or percontation point (see Irony punctuation) was invented by Henry Denham in the 1580s and was used at the end of a rhetorical question;[24] however, it became obsolete in the 17th century. It was the reverse of an ordinary question mark, so that instead of the main opening pointing back into the sentence, it opened away from it.[24] This character can be represented using the reversed question mark found at Unicode as U+2E2E.

Bracketed question marks can be used for rhetorical questions, for example Oh, really(?), in informal contexts such as closed captioning.

The question mark can also be used as a

meaning
).

In typography, some other variants and combinations are available: "⁇," "⁈," and "⁉," are usually used for chess annotation symbols; the interrobang, "‽," is used to combine the functions of the question mark[25] and the exclamation mark, superposing these two marks.

Unicode makes available these variants:

  • U+2047 DOUBLE QUESTION MARK
  • U+2048 QUESTION EXCLAMATION MARK
  • U+2049 EXCLAMATION QUESTION MARK
    • ⁉️ with an
      emoji variation selector
  • U+203D INTERROBANG
  • U+2E18 INVERTED INTERROBANG
  • U+2E2E REVERSED QUESTION MARK
  • U+061F ؟ ARABIC QUESTION MARK
  • U+FE56 SMALL QUESTION MARK
  • U+00BF ¿ INVERTED QUESTION MARK (¿)
  • U+2753 BLACK QUESTION MARK ORNAMENT
  • U+2754 WHITE QUESTION MARK ORNAMENT
  • U+1F679 🙹 HEAVY INTERROBANG ORNAMENT
  • U+1F67A 🙺 SANS-SERIF INTERROBANG ORNAMENT
  • U+1F67B 🙻 HEAVY SANS-SERIF INTERROBANG ORNAMENT

Computing

In computing, the question mark character is represented by ASCII code 63 (0x3F hexadecimal), and is located at Unicode code-point U+003F ? QUESTION MARK (?). The full-width (double-byte) equivalent (), is located at code-point U+FF1F FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK.[26]

The

Mac OS X (macOS), the key combination Option
Shift ? produces an inverted question mark.

In shell and scripting languages, the question mark is often utilized as a wildcard character: a symbol that can be used to substitute for any other character or characters in a string. In particular, filename globbing uses "?" as a substitute for any one character, as opposed to the asterisk, "*", which matches zero or more characters in a string.

The question mark is used in ASCII renderings of the International Phonetic Alphabet, such as SAMPA, in place of the glottal stop symbol, ʔ, (which resembles "?" without the dot), and corresponds to Unicode code point U+0294 ʔ LATIN LETTER GLOTTAL STOP.

In

?: operator, which is used to evaluate simple boolean conditions. In C# 2.0, the ? modifier is used to handle nullable data types and ?? is the null coalescing operator. In the POSIX syntax for regular expressions, such as that used in Perl and Python, ? stands for "zero or one instance of the previous subexpression", i.e. an optional element. It can also make a quantifier like {x,y}, + or * match as few characters as possible, making it lazy, e.g. /^.*?px/ will match the substring 165px in 165px 17px instead of matching 165px 17px.[a] In certain implementations of the BASIC programming language, the ? character may be used as a shorthand for the "print" function; in others (notably the BBC BASIC family), ? is used to address a single-byte memory location. In OCaml, the question mark precedes the label for an optional parameter. In Scheme, as a convention, symbol names ending in ? are used for predicates, such as odd?, null?, and eq?. Similarly, in Ruby, method names ending in ? are used for predicates. In Swift a type followed by ? denotes an option type; ? is also used in "optional chaining", where if an option value is nil, it ignores the following operations. Similarly, in Kotlin, a type followed by ? is nullable and functions similar to option chaining are supported. In APL, ? generates random numbers or a random subset of indices. In Rust, a ? suffix on a function or method call indicates error handling. In SPARQL, the question mark is used to introduce variable names, such as ?name. In MUMPS
, it is the pattern match operator.

In many

replacement character, usually rendered as a white question mark in a black diamond: U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTER. This commonly occurs for apostrophes and quotation marks when they are written with software that uses its own proprietary non-standard code for these characters, such as Microsoft Office's "smart quotes"
.

The generic

URL syntax allows for a query string to be appended to a resource location in a Web address so that additional information can be passed to a script; the query mark, ?, is used to indicate the start of a query string. A query string is usually made up of a number of different field/value pairs, each separated by the ampersand
symbol, &, as seen in this URL:

http://www.example.com/search.php?query=testing&database=English

Here, a script on the page search.php on the server www.example.com is to provide a response to the query string containing the pairs query=testing and database=English.

Games

In

dubious
move, and "!?" an interesting move.

In Scrabble, a question mark indicates a blank tile.[27]

Linguistics

In most areas of

asterisk is used to indicate outright ungrammaticality.[31]
: 332 )

Other sources go further and use several symbols (e.g. the question mark and the asterisk plus ?* or the degree symbol °) to indicate gradations or a continuum of acceptability.[c]

Yet others use double question marks ?? to indicate a degree of strangeness between those indicated by a single question mark and that indicated by the combination of question mark and asterisk.[33][34]

Mathematics and formal logic

In

Minkowski's question mark function
.

In linear logic, the question mark denotes one of the exponential modalities that control weakening and contraction.

When placed above the relational symbol in an equation or inequality, a question-mark annotation means that the stated relation is "questioned". This can be used to ask whether the relation might be true or to point out the relation's possible invalidity.

  • U+225F QUESTIONED EQUAL TO
  • U+2A7B LESS-THAN WITH QUESTION MARK ABOVE
  • U+2A7C GREATER-THAN WITH QUESTION MARK ABOVE

Medicine

A question mark is used in English medical notes to suggest a possible

lower abdominal pain, a differential diagnosis might include ?diverticulitis
(read as "query diverticulitis").

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The Perl Compatible Regular Expressions library implements the U flag, which reverses behavior of quantifiers: these become lazy by default, and ? can make them greedy.
  2. ^ One article notes succintly that "common practice in linguistics [is that] an asterisk preceding a word, a clause or a sentence is used to indicate ungrammaticality or unacceptability, while a question mark is used to indicate questionable usage",[28]: 15  another that, "A question mark indicates that the example is marginal; an asterisk indicates unacceptability"[29]: 409  and another that "examples preceded by an asterisk are ungrammatical, and those preceded by a question mark would be considered strange".[30]: 623 
  3. ^ One example is "rough approximations of acceptability are given in four gradations and indicated as follows: normal and preferred, no mark; acceptable but not preferred, degree sign °; marginally acceptable, question mark (?); unacceptable, asterisk (*)."[32]: 123–24 

References

  1. ^ Truss 2003, p. 139.
  2. ^ "The riddle of the Syriac double dot: it's the world's earliest question mark". University of Cambridge. 2011-07-21. Archived from the original on 2022-11-01. Retrieved 2022-11-01.
  3. ^ "Symbol in Syriac may be world's first question mark". Reuters. 2011-07-21. Archived from the original on 2022-11-01. Retrieved 2022-11-01.
  4. ^ a b "The Grammarphobia Blog: Who invented the question mark?". www.grammarphobia.com. 2022-02-28. Archived from the original on 2022-11-01. Retrieved 2022-11-01.
  5. ^ Truss 2003, p. 159.
  6. .
  7. ^ The Straight Dope on the question mark Archived July 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (link down)
  8. ^ De Hamel, Christopher History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 1997
  9. ^ Bembo, Pietro (1495–1496). De Aetna. Venice: Aldo Pio Manuzio. f. 4v.
  10. ^ Florio, John (1598). A worlde of wordes, or, Most copious, and exact dictionarie in Italian and English. London: By Arnold Hatfield for Edw. Blount. p. 188. Iterogatiuo punto, a point of interrogation.
  11. .
  12. ^ Elkin, Stanley (1991). The MacGuffin. p. 173.
  13. ^ Truss 2003, p. 142–143.
  14. Real Academia Española. 1779 [1754] – via Internet Archive
    .
  15. ^ Interrogación y exclamación (signos de). Punto 3d.
  16. ^ Interrogación y exclamación (signos de). Punto 3b.
  17. .
  18. ^ Thompson, Edward Maunde (1912). An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaiography. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 60 ff. Retrieved December 10, 2017 – via Internet Archive.
  19. ^ Nicolas, Nick (November 20, 2014). "Greek Unicode Issues: Punctuation". Thesaurus Linguae Graecae: A Digital Library of Greek Literature. University of California, Irvine. Archived from the original on January 18, 2015.". 2005. Accessed 7 October 2014.
  20. ^ "Adlam/Pular orthography notes". r12a.github.io. 5 January 2023. Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  21. ^ Truss 2003, p. 143.
  22. ..
  23. ^ "Learn English Punctuation - English Punctuation Rules". www.learnenglish.de. Retrieved 2024-02-20.
  24. ^ a b Truss 2003, p. 142.
  25. ^ Mandeville, Henry (1851). A Course of Reading for Common Schools and the Lower Classes of Academies. Retrieved November 22, 2013.
  26. ^ "Character Codes – HTML Codes, Hexadecimal Codes & HTML Names". Character-Code.com. Archived from the original on August 7, 2016. Retrieved August 7, 2016.
  27. ^ "Scrabble Glossary". Tucson Scrabble Club. Archived from the original on August 30, 2011. Retrieved February 6, 2012.
  28. JSTOR 23826160
    . Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  29. . Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  30. . Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  31. . Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  32. . Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  33. .
  34. .

Bibliography

External links

  • "The Question Mark". Guide to Grammar & Writing. Hartford, Connecticut: Capital Community College Foundation. 2004. Archived from the original on 8 September 2006. Retrieved 10 December 2017. – provides an overview of question mark usage, and the differences between direct, indirect, and rhetorical questions.