The Wit’s Guide to the Interrobang

Or, a dubious move

Punctuated detail from La Surprise, Joseph Ducreux , 1790s

How fitting that the failure of the interrobang wasn’t really a surprise. Advertising executive Martin K. Specktor dreamed up the ‽ in 1962 as a way to express a typographic combination of shock and doubt. Sure, you could type ?! or !?, but it would be so much more elegant, he argued, to combine the two points into one. How about that‽

“An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

Did anyone want a ‽, though? Specktor claimed he was meeting a need, but as meticulous chronicler Keith Houston hints, the real problem might have been that he had four extra pages to fill in Type Talks, his journal on advertising typography. Finally, an advertisement could streamline the sentence “What?! A Refrigerator That Makes Its Own Ice Cubes?!”

“It’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
― Bertrand Russell

Specktor’s campaign garnered a smattering of media attention and the interrobang was briefly added to Remington Rand’s typewriters in 1968 because it “expresses Modern Life’s Incredibility.” These minor flashes of success were enough to warrant the interrobang’s 1993 inclusion in Unicode, which is how I can type a ‽ here. And so people are constantly rediscovering this odd typographical mark in the junk drawer and wondering if its time may yet arrive.

“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.”
― W.H. Auden

“Could the interrobang be the punctuation mark for our age?” the great

Anne Trubek

asked in 2009. “Aren’t we at once curious and cynical, world-weary yet bemused, and always pretty darned informal?” And maybe we were and are, but what she couldn’t know then was that within a year the Age of the Emoji would be upon us. Who needs a ‽ when you’ve got a 🤔, 🤷‍♂️, or the ⁉️?

“Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”
― Mae West

The case for the interrobang is similar to the arguments for special symbols to designate irony or sarcasm, also documented by Houston. Obviously this is a wonderful idea from people who totally understand how humans use language. It’s a huge surprise that it never caught on. If only there were a custom typeface or a special character to suggest that I’m being facetious. But there isn’t, so I guess we’ll never know.

“All those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.”
― Terry Pratchett

There is something very un-‽ in the fact that the New York Times obituary for Specktor can’t render the mark that earned him the notice in the first place, and that in chess it can be used to describe, per Wikipedia, “a dubious move, one that is questionable but possibly has merits.”

“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”
― H.L. Mencken

The interrobang may yet have its moment; as Houston has written, previously obscure symbols like the @ and # became indispensable to modern communication once they were assigned new meanings. Until then, ‽ remains the answer to a question no one is enthusiastically asking.

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November’s Riposte Card, still the case

A nice stack of this month’s Riposte Cards for paying subscribers remains on my desk, immobilized by the ongoing postal strike. One day I’ll mail them, but until that time, please meet Matthew Daley, the artist of the above Llosa riff on fecal weather patterns:

What’s your go-to item in a well-stocked stationery store?
Lettering stamps, especially sans serif.

Where do you go for inspiration and/or information?
I’ve built up a nice collection of picture books, comics and art books that inspire me quite a bit when I'm stuck.

Is there one joke, witticism, or aphorism you live by?
As my good friend C. Smaloochi says “One can either produce or become produce.” I need to take that more seriously sometimes.

What’s the best thing to put on toast?
Raspberry jam reigns supreme.

What work are you most proud of, and how can people support it?
My book Assorted Baggage, which was released by Black Eye Books in 2022. You can purchase physical copies at The Beguiling in Toronto or the digital edition at this link.

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Reader Mailbag, Hard Bop Edition

In a perfect world, every witticism would be set to music. So I was delighted that this quip from last week’s edition:

“Life, though, is peculiar,” said Jeremy.
“As compared with what?” said the spider.
— Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Led loyal reader Jerry Flexer to “think of a great song I discovered only recently: Compared to What by Eddie Harris and Les McCann.”

It is in fact an absolute banger. Thank you, Jerry! The line itself benefits from a lack of context, but if you must know more about that spider, Quote Investigator explains it well here.

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Quote Vote

“Genuinely good remarks surprise their author as well as his audience.”
― Joseph Joubert

It may well be that anyone who would use an interrobang to express shock or confusion wouldn’t be shocked or confused by the same things as the rest of us. Anyway, onto bigger things next week!

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That was Issue No. 282 of Get Wit Quick, a newsletter that has the means to end sentences the old-fashioned way. I barely mentioned the incredibility of modern life in my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Tap the ❤️ below to express your own secret and unique combination of emotions.