For the inverted question mark, see¿. For the backwards or mirrored question mark ⸮ used to indicate rhetorical questions (or sometimes irony or sarcasm), seePercontation point. For the similar but dotless mark ʔ used in IPA, seeGlottal stop. For other uses, seeQuestion mark (disambiguation).
The history of the question mark is contested. One popular theory posits that the shape of the symbol is inspired by the crook in a cat's tail, often attributed to the ancient Egyptians.[2] However,Egyptian hieroglyphics did not use punctuation marks.[3]
In the fifth century,Syriac Bible manuscripts used question markers, according to a 2011 theory by manuscript specialist Chip Coakley: he believes thezagwa elaya ("upper pair"), a vertical double dot over a word at the start of a sentence, indicates that the sentence is a question.[4][5]
From around 783, inGodescalc Evangelistary, a mark described as "a lightning flash, striking from right to left" is attested.[6][7] This mark is later called apunctus interrogativus. According to somepaleographers, it may have indicatedintonation, perhaps associated with early musical notation likeneumes.[6] Another theory, is that the "lightning flash" was originally atilde ortitlo, as in·~, one of many wavy or more or less slanted marks used inmedieval texts for denoting things such asabbreviations, which would later become variousdiacritics orligatures.[8][9] The creation of thepunctus interrogativus has also been attributed toAlcuin of York, an advisor toCharlemagne.[2]
From the 10th century, the pitch-defining element (if it ever existed) seems to have been gradually forgotten, so that the "lightning flash" sign (with the stroke sometimes slightly curved) is often seen indifferently at the end of clauses, whether they embody a question or not.[citation needed]
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,[10] punctuation was rationalized by assigning the "lightning flash" specifically tointerrogatives; by this time, the stroke was more sharply curved and can easily be recognized as the modern question mark (see, for example,De Aetna [it] (1496) printed byAldo Manuzio inVenice[11]).
In 1598, the English termpoint of interrogation is attested in anItalian–English dictionary byJohn Florio.[12]
In the 1850s, the termquestion mark is attested:[13]
The mark which you are to notice in this lesson is of this shape? You see it is made by placing a little crooked mark over a period.... The name of this mark is theQuestion Mark, because it is always put after a question. Sometimes it is called by a longer and harder name. The long and hard name is theInterrogation Point.
In English, the question mark typically occurs at the end of a sentence, where it replaces thefull stop (period). However, the question mark may also occur at the end of a clause or phrase, where it replaces the comma(see alsoQuestion comma):
"Is it good in form? style? meaning?"
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."
In Spanish, since the second edition of theOrtografía of theReal Academia Española in 1754, interrogatives require both opening¿ and closing? question marks.[15][16] An interrogative sentence, clause, or phrase begins with aninverted question mark¿ and ends with the question mark?, as in:
Ella me pregunta «¿qué hora es?» – 'She asks me, "What time is it?"'
Question marks must always be matched, but to mark uncertainty rather than actual interrogation omitting the opening one is allowed, although discouraged:[17]
Gengis Khan (¿1162?–1227) is preferred in Spanish overGengis Khan (1162?–1227)
The omission of the opening mark is common in informal writing, but is considered an error. 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 order may also be reversed, opening with a question mark and closing with an exclamation mark.) Nonetheless, even here theAcademia recommends matching punctuation:[18]
¡¿Quién te has creído que eres?!
The opening question mark in Unicode isU+00BF¿INVERTED QUESTION MARK (¿).
InArmenian, the question mark is adiacritic that takes the form of an open circle and is placed over the stressed vowel of the question word. It is defined in Unicode atU+055E◌՞ARMENIAN QUESTION MARK.
TheGreek question mark (Greek:ερωτηματικό,romanized: erōtīmatikó) looks like;. It appeared around the same time as the Latin one, in the 8th century.[20] It was adopted byChurch Slavonic and eventually settled on a form essentially similar to the Latinsemicolon. InUnicode, it is separately encoded asU+037E;GREEK QUESTION MARK, but the similarity is so great that thecode point isnormalised toU+003B;SEMICOLON, making the marks identical in practice.[21]
InArabic and other languages that use Arabic script such asPersian,Urdu andUyghur (Arabic form), which are written fromright to left, the question mark is mirrored right-to-left from the Latin question mark. In Unicode, two encodings are available:U+061F؟ARABIC QUESTION MARK (withbi-directional code AL: Right-to-Left Arabic) andU+2E2E⸮REVERSED QUESTION MARK (with bi-directional code Other Neutrals). Some browsers may display the character in the previous sentence as a forward question mark due to font or text directionality issues.
The Arabic question mark is also used in some other right-to-left scripts:Dhivehi,[22]N'Ko,[23]Syriac,[24] andAdlam.[25] Adlam also hasU+1E95F𞥟ADLAM INITIAL QUESTION MARK:𞥟 𞤢𞤤𞤢𞥄 ؟, 'No?'.[25]
Hebrew script is also written right-to-left, but it uses a question mark that appears on the page in the same orientation as the left-to-right question mark (e.g.את מדברת עברית?).[26]
The question mark is also used in modern writing inChinese and, to a lesser extent,Japanese. Usually, it is written asfullwidth form in Chinese and Japanese, in Unicode:U+FF1F？FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK. Fullwidth form is always preferred in official usage.[27][28][29] InKorean, however, halfwidth is used.[30]
Japanese has an interrogative particle,か (ka), which functions grammatically like a question mark. Therefore, the question mark is not historically used in Japanese, and is still not officially sanctioned for use in government publications or school textbooks, but its popularity has been gradually increasing among younger people. Where official usage is終わったのかもしれませんよ。, some people would now informally write終わったのかもしれませんよ？ to express "It may be over"; the question mark here adds a nuance of uncertainty to the sentence rather than turning it into a question.[31]
Chinese also has a spoken indicator of questions, which is吗 (ma). However, the question mark should always be used after吗 when asking questions.[32]
The rhetorical question mark or percontation point (seeIrony punctuation) was invented byHenry Denham in the 1580s and was used at the end of arhetorical question;[35] however, it became obsolete in the 17th century. 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.[35] This character can be represented usingU+2E2E⸮REVERSED QUESTION MARK.
Bracketed question marks can be used for rhetorical questions, for exampleOh, really(?), in informal contexts such asclosed captioning.
The question mark can also be used as ameta-sign to signal uncertainty regarding what precedes it. It is usually put between brackets:(?). The uncertainty may concern either a superficial level (such as unsure spelling), or a deepertruth (realmeaning).
In typography, some other variants and combinations are available: "⁇," "⁈," and "⁉," are usually used forchess annotation symbols; theinterrobang, "‽," is used to combine the functions of the question mark[36] and theexclamation mark, superposing these two marks.
Incomputing, the question markcharacter is represented byASCII code 63 (0x3F hexadecimal), and is located at Unicode code-pointU+003F?QUESTION MARK (?). The full-width (double-byte) equivalent (？), is located at code-pointU+FF1F？FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK.[37]
Theinverted question mark (¿) corresponds to Unicode code-pointU+00BF¿INVERTED QUESTION MARK (¿)
In shell and scripting languages, the question mark is often utilized as awildcard character: a symbol that can be used to substitute for any other character or characters in astring. In particular,filename globbing uses "?" as a substitute for any one character, as opposed to theasterisk, "*", which matches zero or more characters in a string.
OnMacs, a folder with a question mark on startup means a startup disk is not found or does not contain a compatible operating system.[38]
The question mark is used in ASCII renderings of theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, such asSAMPA, in place of theglottal stop symbol,ʔ, (which resembles "?" without the dot), and corresponds to Unicode code pointU+0294ʔLATIN LETTER GLOTTAL STOP.
InJava,? can represent awildcard type parameter. For instance,List<?> denotes a list that can hold any type (but notnull), andList<?extends T> andList<?super T> denote a list that can hold any type that inherits from/is an ancestor class of (respectively) typeT (includingT itself).
In thePOSIX syntax forregular expressions, such as that used inPerl andPython,? stands for "zero or one instance of the previous subexpression", i.e. an optional element. It can also make a quantifier like{x,y},+ or* match as few characters as possible, making it lazy, e.g./^.*?px/ will match the substring165px in165px 17px instead of matching165px 17px.[a]
In certain implementations of theBASIC programming language, the? character may be used as a shorthand for the "print" function; in others (notably theBBC BASIC family),? is used to address a single-byte memory location.
InOCaml, the question mark precedes the label for an optional parameter.
InScheme, as a convention, symbol names ending in? are used for predicates, such asodd?,null?, andeq?. Similarly, inRuby, method names ending in? are used for predicates.
InSwift a type followed by? denotes anoption type;? is also used in "optional chaining", where if an option value is nil, it ignores the following operations. Similarly, inKotlin, a type followed by? isnullable and functions similar to option chaining are supported.
InAPL,? generates random numbers or a random subset of indices.
InRust, a? suffix on a function or method call indicates error handling.
InSPARQL, the question mark is used to introduce variable names, such as?name. InMUMPS, it is the pattern match operator.
In thexBase family of programming languages, which includesdBase andFoxPro, either one or two question marks at the start of a line of code serve as a shorthand for the Print function. The effect is to evaluate the following expression(s) and to send the result(s) either to the screen or a printer. A single question mark sends a carriage return and line feed before the output; this is not the case with a double question mark.[39][40]
In manyWeb browsers and other computer programs, when converting text between encodings, it may not be possible to map some characters into the targetcharacter set. In this situation it is common to replace each unmappable character with a question mark?, inverted question mark¿, or the Unicodereplacement character, usually rendered as a white question mark in a black diamond:U+FFFD�REPLACEMENT CHARACTER. 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, such asMicrosoft Office's"smart quotes".
The genericURL syntax allows for aquery string to be appended to a resource location 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 theampersand symbol,&, as seen in this URL:
Here, a script on the pagesearch.php on the serverwww.example.com is to provide a response to the query string containing the pairsquery=testing anddatabase=English.
In most areas oflinguistics, but especially insyntax, a question mark in front of a word, phrase or sentence indicates that the form in question is strongly dispreferred, "questionable" or "strange", but not outrightungrammatical.[b] (Theasterisk is used to indicate outright ungrammaticality.[45]: 332 )
Other sources go further and use several symbols (e.g. the question mark and the asterisk plus?* or thedegree symbol°) to indicate gradations or a continuum of acceptability.[c]
Yet others use double question marks?? to indicate a degree of strangeness between those indicated by a single question mark and that indicated by the combination of question mark and asterisk.[47][48]
Inlinear logic, the question mark denotes one of the exponential modalities that control weakening and contraction.
When placed above the relational symbol in anequation orinequality, a question-mark annotation means that the stated relation is "questioned". This can be used to ask whether the relation might be true or to point out the relation's possible invalidity.
A question mark is used in English medical notes to suggest a possiblediagnosis. It facilitates the recording of a doctor's impressions regarding a patient's symptoms and signs. For example, for a patient presenting with leftlower abdominal pain, a differential diagnosis might include?diverticulitis (read as "query diverticulitis").
^ThePerl Compatible Regular Expressions library implements theU flag, which reverses behavior of quantifiers: these become lazy by default, and? can make them greedy.
^One article notes succinctly that "common practice in linguistics [is that] an asterisk preceding a word, a clause or a sentence is used to indicate ungrammaticality or unacceptability, while a question mark is used to indicate questionable usage",[42]: 15 another that, "A question mark indicates that the example is marginal; an asterisk indicates unacceptability"[43]: 409 and another that "examples preceded by an asterisk are ungrammatical, and those preceded by a question mark would be considered strange".[44]: 623
^One example is "rough approximations of acceptability are given in four gradations and indicated as follows: normal and preferred, no mark; acceptable but not preferred, degree sign°; marginally acceptable, question mark (?); unacceptable, asterisk (*)."[46]: 123–24
^"标点符号用法"(PDF).Chinese Ministry of Education (in Simplified Chinese).句号、逗号、顿号、分号、冒号均置于相应文字之后，占一个字位置，居左下，不出现在一行之首。
^"常用格式說明"(PDF).Chinese Journal of Psychology (in Traditional Chinese).請使用新式標準符號，所有的中文標點符號都要佔全形。
^"記述上の約束事".The Japan Sociological Society (in Japanese). 8 February 2019.和文を書くときには，原則としてすべて全角文字を使用しなければならない．漢字，ひらがな，カタカナのみならず，句読点やカッコ記号なども，全角文字を使用すること（このルールの例外については，そのつど述べる）．
^"标点符号用法"(PDF).Chinese Ministry of Education (in Simplified Chinese).使用问号主要根据语段前后有较大停顿、带有疑问语气和语调，并不取决于句子的长短。
^"Ponctuation".Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à l'Imprimerie nationale (in French) (3e ed.).Imprimerie nationale. October 2007. pp. 148–149.ISBN978-2-7433-0482-9..
^Jones, Michael Alan (1996).Foundations of French Syntax. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. xxv.ISBN0-521-38104-5.
Lupton, Ellen; Miller, J. Abbott (2003)."Period Styles: A Punctuated History"(PDF). In Peterson, Linda H. (ed.).The Norton Reader (11th ed.). Norton. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on June 14, 2007. RetrievedDecember 10, 2017 – via Think-gn.com – online excerpt (at least – may be full text of chapter), pp. 3–7.
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"The Question Mark".Guide to Grammar & Writing. Hartford, Connecticut:Capital Community College Foundation. 2004. Archived fromthe original on 8 September 2006. Retrieved10 December 2017. – provides an overview of question mark usage, and the differences between direct, indirect, and rhetorical questions.
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