Inverted question mark and exclamation point
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The inverted question mark and exclamation point are used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences, respectively, in written Spanish.
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[edit] Usage
The inverted question mark (¿) is a punctuation mark indicating a question and is placed before the first letter of an interrogative sentence or clause. It is an inverted form of the standard symbol '?', recognized by speakers of other languages using the Latin alphabet. In most languages, a single question mark is used and only at the end of an interrogative sentence: "How old are you?" This was also once true for Spanish. The inverted question mark was not adopted until long after the decision of the Real Academia in the second edition of La Ortografía de la Real Academia (1754) to recommend it as the symbol indicating the beginning of a question in written Spanish — ¿Cuántos años tienes? ("How old are you?"). The Real Academia also ordered the same system for statements of exclamation using the symbols '¡' and '!'. In mixed declarative/interrogative sentences, only the clause that asks a question is isolated with the inverted question mark. A good example would be: Aunque no puedes ir con ellos, ¿quieres ir con nosotros? (Although you can't go with them, would you like to go with us?)
Adoption of these new rules was slow, and there are even books from the nineteenth century that do not use either of the opening symbols, '¡' or '¿' It did finally become standard usage, most likely due to its practicality given that Spanish syntax in many cases does not help the reader determine at what moment a sentence in progress is a question. For example, without any punctuation to indicate if they are questions or not, the sentences ¿Hablas bien el español? ("Do you speak Spanish well?") and Hablas bien el español ("You speak Spanish well") are identical in writing. With longer sentences, using the punctuation indicates that a question has started.
An alternative usage, which did not become widely adopted, was to use the inverted question mark only when the question was long, or when there was sufficient risk of ambiguity, but not for short sentences or those that were clearly questions such as Quién viene? ("Who goes there?") This is the criterion used in Catalan (although certain Catalan-language authorities, such as Joan Solà, insist that both the opening and closing question marks should be used for the sake of clarity). The influence of English could be reinstating this old criterion in Spanish as well.[citation needed]
Some Spanish-language writers, among them Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, have refused to use the inverted question mark in whatever context. Furthermore, it is common that in Internet chat rooms or instant messaging people now only use the single, ending symbol ('?') to form a question since it saves time typing. Besides, using most keyboards it is far easier to type the ending symbol than the opening inverted symbol. It is however frequent in these contexts to duplicate the ending symbols to emphasize: Por qué dices eso?? instead of the standard ¿Por qué dices eso? ("Why do you say that?"). Given that these are informal settings, this may seem to be of little importance; however, some see this as a problem, fearing (and claiming) that young people are now inappropriately extending this practice to homework and essays[citation needed] , where it counts as an error.
Unspoken uncertainty is sometimes expressed in writing (informal notes, comics) by ¿? and surprise by ¡!, but simple ? and ! are also seen.
[edit] Mixtures of question marks and exclamation points
Although it has now fallen into disuse, it is actually correct usage in Spanish to begin a sentence with an opening inverted exclamation mark ('¡') and end it with a question mark ('?'), or vice-versa, for statements that are questions but also have a clear sense of exclamation or surprise such as: ¡Y tú quién te crees que eres? ("Who do you think you are?!"). This is similar to the proposed English interrobang. Normally, the four signs are used, always with a type in the outer side and the other in the inner side (¿¡Y tú quién te crees que eres!?, ¡¿Y tú quién te crees que eres?! [1])
[edit] Computer usage
[edit] Encodings
"¡" and "¿" are both located within the Unicode Common block, and are both inherited from ISO-8859-1. "¡" has Unicode codepoint U+00A1 (decimal entity reference ¡) and HTML named entity reference ¡. "¿" has Unicode codepoint U+00BF (decimal entity reference ¿) and has HTML named entity reference ¿. In both cases, the "i" in the named entity reference is an initialism for "inverted".[2]
[edit] Input methods
"¿" is available in all keyboard layouts for Spanish-speaking countries. On English keyboards under Microsoft Windows, the inverted question mark can be entered by holding down the Alt key and pressing 0191, 168, or 5544 on the number pad. The inverted exclamation point can be entered by holding down the Alt key and pressing 0161, 173 or 8877 on the number pad.
On the Mac OS X platform (or when using the "US International"/us-intl keyboard layout on Windows and Linux), "¡" and "¿" can be entered by pressing Alt + 1 and Shift + Alt + / respectively. With a compose key, they can be entered by pressing the compose key and ! or ? twice.
In LaTeX documents, the "¿" is written as "?`" (question mark, backtick), and "¡" as "!`" (exclamation point, backtick).
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ RAE's Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas (Spanish)
- ^ Character entity references in HTML 4, W3C
he:סימן הפוך ja:¿ es:! pt:Pontos de interrogação e de exclamação invertidos th:ปรัศนีและอัศเจรีย์กลับหัว
