I'm Just Filled with Modest Propsals!

[gfish]

I was ruminating on the problem of inappropriate punctuation. It's easy and useful to filter out people who use multiple exclamation points or question marks. Yet the combination of the two (?!) expresses an important and common emotional tone. Obviously we need a new punctuation mark to solve this conflict. Overloading an existing symbol is obviously truest to the path of laziness.

I nominate the IPA symbol for 'vd epiglottal plosive': ʡ

Its unicode value is 673. Using ʡ you can insert it in html (like this post).

Example:
Microsoft had to patch IIS againʡ
The prime minister and the monkey did whatʡ
Are you trying to tell me that the babysitter explodedʡ

Comments

[torquemada.livejournal.com]

If the font supports it, sure. But you're forty-one years too late.

http://www.interrobang-mks.com/

[gfish.livejournal.com]

There already is such a symbol‽

Hee hee.

Cool, I hadn't seen that before. Clumsy looking, but less work for me. And, obviously, it's in unicode as well. Value 8253.

I love Unicode

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

I bought the big hardback Unicode ("Standard Version 3.0") book awhile ago. I have actually used it in programming, but mostly I just like to look at all the cool characters...

‽ = ‽, INTERROBANG. But there's also ⁈, QUESTION EXCLAMATION MARK, which basically looks like ?! , and also ⁉, EXCLAMATION QUESTION MARK, which looks like !? . Sometimes I wonder what the point of some of these is...

[mathochist.livejournal.com]

My computer apparently doesn't support your unicode. All I see is squares. Oh well.

I like the term "interrobang". And it's exactly the right punctuation for "WTF?!"