July 28, 2000

Crossing a Question Mark With an Exclamation Point

By MARK D. HARMON

I write in praise of the interrobang, a punctuation mark that looks something like a question mark with an exclamation point superimposed on it. It is the perfect punctuation mark for parents, as in: "You got home when?!" or "You left your brother where?!" or "You did/ate/pierced what?!" Unfortunately, the interrobang is not available on any keyboard that I know of, so we still are obliged to use both question mark and exclamation point as punctuation for such