(The order may also be reversed, opening with a question mark and closing with an exclamation mark.) Nonetheless, even here the Academy recommends matching punctuation: ¡¿Quién te has creído que eres?! 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 omission of the opening mark is common in informal writing, but is considered an error. Question marks must always be matched, but to mark uncertainty rather than actual interrogation omitting the opening one is allowed, although discouraged: Gengis Kan (❱162?–1227) is better than Gengis Kan (1162?–1227) An interrogative sentence, clause, or phrase begins with an inverted question mark ⟨ ¿ ⟩ and ends with the question mark ⟨ ? ⟩, as in: Ella me pregunta «¿qué hora es?» – She asks me, "What time is it?" In Spanish, since the second edition of the Ortografía of the Royal Academy in 1754, interrogatives require both opening (¿) and closing (?) question marks. In other languages and scripts Opening and closing question marks
However, interrogative requests typically use a full stop (period) rather than a question mark: Will you please forward my mail. 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?)Ī question mark may also appear immediately after questionable data, such as dates: Genghis Khan (1162?–1227) This is quite common in Spanish, where the use of bracketing question marks explicitly indicates the scope of interrogation. 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.' However, it may also occur at the end of a clause or phrase, where it replaces the comma: Is it good in form? style? meaning? In English, the question mark typically occurs at the end of a sentence, where it replaces the full stop (period). The Syriac question mark has the form of a vertical double dot.
However, evidence of the actual use of the Q-over-o notation in medieval manuscripts is lacking if anything, medieval forms of the upper component seem to be evolving towards the q-shape rather than away from it.Īccording to a 2011 discovery by a Cambridge manuscript expert, Syriac was the first language to use a punctuation mark to indicate an interrogative sentence. The lowercase q was written above the lowercase o, and this mark was transformed into the modern symbol. It has also been suggested that the glyph derives from the Latin quaestiō (that is, qvaestio), meaning "question", which was abbreviated during the Middle Ages to qo. Also the question mark refers to a very remarkable standard of how it changes the human understanding of words. 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, punctuation was rationalized by assigning Alcuin's stroke-over-dot specifically to interrogatives by this time the stroke was more sharply curved and can easily be recognized as the modern question mark. Over the next three centuries this pitch-defining element (if it ever existed) seems to have been forgotten, so that the Alcuinesque stroke-over-dot sign (with the stroke sometimes slightly curved) is often seen indifferently at the end of clauses, whether they embody a question or not.