Question mark
Encyclopedia : Q : QU : QUE : Question mark
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apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ ) brackets ( ( ) ) ( [ ] ) ( ) ( 〈 〉 ) colon ( : ) comma ( , ) dashes ( ‒ ) ( – ) ( — ) ( ― ) ellipsis ( … ) ( ... ) exclamation mark ( ! ) full stop/period ( . ) guillemets ( « » ) hyphen ( - ) ( ‐ ) interpunct ( · ) question mark ( ? ) quotation marks ( " ) ( ‘ ’ ) ( “ ” ) semicolon ( ; ) slash/solidus ( / ) |
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spaces ( ) ( ) ( ) |
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ampersand ( & ) asterisk ( * ) asterism ( ⁂ ) at ( @ ) backslash ( \ ) bullet ( • ) caret ( ^ ) currency ( ¤ ) & ¢, $, €, £, ¥ dagger ( † ) ( ‡ ) degree ( ° ) interrobang ( ‽ ) number sign ( # ) percent and related signs ( % ) ( ‰ ) ( ‱ ) pilcrow ( ¶ ) prime ( ′ ) Inverted exclamation point (¡) inverted question mark (¿) section sign ( § ) tilde ( ~ ) Irony mark Sarcasm mark umlaut/diaresis ( ¨ ) underscore/understrike ( _ ) vertical line/pipe/broken bar ( | ) ( ¦ ) |
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.
Convention
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 [Ponctuation] at French Wikipedia). 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. However, on closer inspection they are not full spaces, tending instead to be half to three-quarters the width of a space. These are not considered spaces; instead, this is simply a form of kerning used to make the text less cramped and thus easier to read.
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.Variants in other languages and in history
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 Microsoft Windows by pressing AltGr-/ or by holding down the Alt key and typing either 1 6 8 or 0 1 9 1 (depends on ANSI codepage) 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. pressingThe 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 [ʔ].
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.
The generic URL (Universal Resource Locator) syntax allows for a query string to be appended to a file name 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, &. For example, somewhere.com/login.php?username=test&password=blank.
Chess
In algebraic chess notation, "?" denotes a bad move, and "??" a blunder. For details see punctuation (chess).Mathematics
In mathematics "?" commonly denotes Minkowski's question mark function.Trivia
- 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.
- The Seventh Doctor's signature was a question mark.
- An episode of Lost was titled ?.
- A song on Tom Green's 2005 rap album Prepare for Impact was entitled "?"
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
See also
External links
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