If Dr. Evils father didn’t do it, then who did invent the question mark?
“If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, set them on fire.”----George Carlin
From the Encyclopaedia Brittanica:
It is in the
earliest specimens of the new Carolingian minuscule script, written at
Corbie and Aachen about 780-800, that the first evidence for a new
system of punctuation appears. It soon spread, with the script itself,
throughout Europe, reaching its perfection in the 12th century. Single
interior stops in the form of points or commas and final groups of
stops continued in use; but they were joined by the mark later
known as punctus elevatus (!) and by the question mark (punctus
interrogativus), of much the same shape as the modern one but
inclined to the right. The source of these two new marks was
apparently the system of musical notation, called neumes, which is
known to have been used for Gregorian chant from at least the
beginning of the 9th century. Punctus elevatus and punctus
interrogativus indicated not only a pause and a syntactical break
but also an appropriate inflection of the voice.
Does that answer your question (punctus
interrogativus)
The story I heard was that the “?” was somehow an abreviation for Q.O., which in turn was an abreviation of “question”. Sounds a little too-cute-to-be-true, so I suspect that Sly’s explanation is closer to the truth.
The story I heard was that the “?” was somehow an abreviation for Q.O., which in turn was an abreviation of “question”. Sounds a little too-cute-to-be-true, so I suspect that Sly’s explanation is closer to the truth.