?

[Basschair]

Where the heck did the question mark come from? Neither Google nor Yahoo come up with results of pages dedicated to the question mark...

































I'm tired.

 

[bassguitar]

?

 

[Freaky Fender]

Dr. Evil's father.

Or so he says.

 

[B'Aces High]

¿

 

[Ifrit84]

It came from me. Not me. The old me.

I travel in time. I am a savior. Lets eat little snack packs of cheese nips for fun.

 

[Davidoc]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark

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.

 

[Basschair]

¿

I literally screamed out loud when I saw that.

It came from me. Not me. The old me.

I travel in time. I am a savior. Lets eat little snack packs of cheese nips for fun.

I'm of the opinion that, in the past ten years or so, the Chz Nips people changed the recipe and now make crappy Nips.

 

[SoComSurfing]

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.

This was pretty much the explanation that I'd always heard. That it originally looked like today's question mark, only rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise. Since generally the clergy were the only ones who could read, the question mark came from an intonation symbol on hymns that indicated for the voice to be raised, the same way it is in posing a question.

 

[Brandt Scanlan]

I'm of the opinion that, in the past ten years or so, the Chz Nips people changed the recipe and now make crappy Nips.

I'm pretty sure that Cheezits have always been far superior to Nips. Or have they?

Yeah, I wanted to use a question mark.

 

[Basschair]

You know what?



I have to modify my former statement. It's not the "nips," but rather the "its" that are now sucking. Or maybe I got a bad box. Anyway, Trader Joes has the best cheese-flavored cracker now, so the point is moot.

 

[Dave]

¿Qué?

 

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

Qué?

It should be "¿Qué?". Spanish language always uses opening question marks.

 

[Dave]

Crap, forgot about that. Thanks.

 

[jrthebassguy]

whats with the spanish upside down question marks?

 

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

whats with the spanish upside down question marks?

What do you mean? It's another feature like the "´" or the "ñ".

 

[jrthebassguy]

What do you mean? It's another feature like the "´" or the "ñ".

I mean the "¿" symbol. It's not used in the English language at all, so I don't know the origin of it. We just use the "?" symbol.

 

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

I mean the "¿" symbol. It's not used in the English language at all, so I don't know the origin of it. We just use the "?" symbol.

This may help.