Question mark
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The question mark (also known as an interrogation point, query, or eroteme) is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence. It can also be used mid-sentence to mark a merely interrogative phrase, where it functions similarly to a comma, such as in the single sentence "Where shall we go? and what shall we do?", but this usage is increasingly rare. The question mark is not used for indirect questions. An inverted question mark looks like ¿.
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Convention
Image:Question.png Some people place a space between the end of their sentence and the question mark. This usage is thought to stem from the French language. In French a space is always placed before question marks, exclamation marks, as well as colons and semicolons. See Wikipedia French: Ponctuation. In English, however, the insertion of this extra blank space is generally considered bad form. The Oxford English Dictionary specifies that no space should precede the question mark. Some English language books may appear to have these spaces. But if you look closely you will see that they are not as wide as a normal space - they tend to be half to three-quarters wide. These don't actually represent spaces as such; they were just a convention used by typesetters to make the text feel less cramped.
Origins
The symbol is generally thought to originate from the Latin quaestio, meaning "question", which was abbreviated to Qo. The uppercase Q was written above the lowercase o, and this mark was transformed into the modern symbol. Another hypothesis about the origin of the question mark proposes that the mark originated in the 9th century, when it appeared as a point followed by the curvy bit written slanted (similar to the tilde, although the tilde was tilted more upward to the right). The point has always indicated the end of a sentence. The curved line represented the intonation pattern of a spoken question, and may be associated with a kind of early musical notation, like neumes. Another possibility is that the question mark resembles a raised eyebrow.
Variants in other languages and in history
Image:Question opening-closing.svg In some languages, such as Spanish and Galician, typography since the 18th century has required opening and closing question marks; an interrogative sentence or phrase begins with an inverted question mark (¿) and ends with the question mark (?) (see more on usage in Spanish.) However, this orthographical convention is often disregarded in quick typing and where the inverted character is not easily available from computer keyboards. In Greek and Church Slavonic, a semicolon (;) is used as a question mark. In Arabic, the question mark "؟" is mirrored. The question mark is also used in modern writing (though not required) in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
The rhetorical question mark first appeared in the 1580s and was used at the end of a rhetorical question. 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. This usage gradually disappeared in the 1600s.
Computing
In computing, the question mark is represented as a Unicode and ASCII character 63 or 0x003F. It 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 "?" is used as a substitute for any one character as opposed to the asterisk (*) which can be used as a substitute for zero or more characters in a string. The inverted question mark corresponds to Unicode character 191 (0x00BF), and can be accessed from the keyboard in some versions (depends on ANSI codepage) of Microsoft Windows by holding down the [Alt] key and typing either 1 6 8 or 0 1 9 1 on the numeric keypad. In GNOME applications, it can be entered by typing the hexadecimal Unicode character while holding ctrl-shift, i.e.: ctrl-shift BF - ¿. In recent XFree86 and X.Org incarnations of the X Window System, it can be accessed as a compose sequence of two straight question marks, i.e. pressing <Compose> ? ? yields ¿. In the Mac OS, option-shift-? produces an inverted question mark.
The question mark is used in ASCII renderings of the International Phonetic Alphabet, such as SAMPA in place of the glottal stop symbol (which resembles "?" without the dot), and corresponds to Unicode character U+0294 Latin letter glottal stop Template:IPA.
In computer programming, the symbol "?" appears in several programming languages. In C "?" is part of the ?: operator, which is used for simple boolean conditions. In C# 2.0, "?" modifier and "??" operator are used to handle nullable data types. In the POSIX syntax for regular expressions, such as the one used in Perl and Python, ? stands for "zero or one instance of the previous subexpression", i.e. an optional element.
In many web browsers, "?" is used to show a character not found in the program's character set. 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.
Controversy
There are some situations where it is questionable as to whether a question mark should be used. For example the sentence, "Pass the salt, please?" could be suffixed with a question mark because in syntactical terms the sentence is an interrogative sentence, and indeed the speaker may intend it as such. However the person requesting passage of the salt may instead inflect the question as an imperative, a direction to "Pass the salt, please." Several authoritative style guides state that the question mark is not necessary in this case.
Therefore the author has a grammatical choice as to whether the punctuation in this sentence should indicate a question or a statement, illuminated by the author's knowledge of the intended meaning delivered by the speaker, and perhaps constrained by a rigid system of syntax imposed by authoritarians in their midst. Authors writing text of unknown meaning have bigger problems than just choice of punctuation.
Another example is the rhetorical question. Since the purpose of the rhetorical question is not to elicit an answer, the use of the question mark at the end of the sentence is arguably at the author's discretion.
However, arguments may ensue over the question, and perhaps these arise for the same reason that people may inflect an apparent question as a direction -- something in our nature. Or should that be, "a direction as a question"?
A popular word processing program, Microsoft Word, automatically "corrects" sentences in the form of "Could you please pass the salt" to "Could you please pass the salt?"; however, few would regard Microsoft Word as an authoritative mandator of style, and the program has no facility to divine the meaning of the text, even when a human can discern it from the context, which is rarely true in this specific quandary -- hence the popularity of punctuation in the first place: to indicate meaning between the textual words.
Whether punctuation should agree with syntax or semantics is a broader issue, beyond the scope of an encyclopedia entry about the humble question mark.
Chess
In algebraic chess notation, "?" denotes a bad move, and "??" a blunder. For details see punctuation (chess).
Mathematics
In mathematics "?" denotes the Minkowski question mark function.
Cinema
An American superstition that movies or television shows with question marks in the title do poorly at the box office has made many studios shy away from the punctuation mark. This has caused many works to be retitled when adapted for American cinema.
- The book Who Censored Roger Rabbit? was retitled Who Framed Roger Rabbit (without the question mark) for the big screen.
- The British television series Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? dropped the question mark when adapted for American TV.
Also, in the film "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery", Dr. Evil says that his deranged father used to make "outrageous claims" such as that he had "invented" the Question mark.
See also
References
- Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, Period Styles: A Punctuated History
- M. B. Parkes, Pause and effect: an introduction to the history of punctuation in the West
External links
da:Spørgsmålstegn de:Fragezeichen es:Signo de interrogación eo:Demandosigno fi:Kysymysmerkki fr:Point d'interrogation ko:물음표 is:Spurningamerki it:Punto interrogativo he:סימן שאלה nl:Vraagteken ja:疑問符 no:Spørsmålstegn pl:Pytajnik pt:Ponto de interrogação ru:Вопросительный знак sl:Vprašaj sr:Знак питања tr:Soru işareti sv:Frågetecken zh:问号