That's a Question

 

Last week, the local university’s library had an open house of its special collections. My traveling companion and I attended. It felt nice to act erudite and sophisticated without writing a big donor’s check for the privilege.

The library displayed a series of illuminated manuscripts. I couldn’t read a word. Sadly, I’ve let my classical Latin lapse. But I did enjoy looking at the vivid colors and intricate designs on the page. At the end of one line, I noticed a small mark, resembling a Spanish tilde. The docent explained that the medieval writer used this squiggle to indicate a question.

Feeling erudite and sophisticated, I nodded. Of course I knew that. When I got home, I looked it up. I immediately fell down a rabbit hole. 

As punctuation, the question mark has one of the more straightforward histories. We all know what a question is. In her 1932 lecture, “Poetry and Grammar,” Gertrude Stein certainly believed this. “A question is a question, anybody can know that a question is a question and so why add to it the question mark when it is already there…Therefore I never could bring myself to use a question mark. I always found it positively revolting…”

While I admire Stein’s passion, “revolting” seems a strong word for a punctuation mark. The sentence also overlooks a central debate in all things punctuation. Who is the mark intended to benefit? The question mark began, according to grammarian David Crystal, as a way of giving preachers a useful graphic cue about when to adopt a questioning tone of voice during a public reading.

We know that early written text was frequently unspaced. Scriptura continua reflected the way people speak—we don’t normally pause between words. But this mashup made reading challenging, so marks that separated words gradually emerged. Dots, slashes, and spaces began to appear. Reader marks followed. Some grammarians believe that our system of punctuation has its roots in ancient Egypt and the chief librarian of Alexandria.

Virtual Manuscript Library-Switzerland, Wikimedia Commons

On the specific origin of the question mark, most experts look to the Romans and their European heirs. In the 8^th Century, King Charlemagne invited the English scholar, Alcuin of York, to join his court. Grammarians credit him with creating the punctus interrogativus, or interrogative point. The mark signaled that an oral reader should add inflection to the end of the sentence. (The half note before tamen in the third line is a punctus interrogativus)

In 1582 Richard Mulcaster published The Elementarie, a stab at standardizing English writing. On the matter of the question mark, he wrote,

Interrogation: two points one aboue another, whereof the vpper is sometime croked which both in writing and reading teacheth us, that a question is asked there, where it is set. 

The short explanation reveals that English speakers still struggled in the 16^th Century to settle on what to call this inflection mark. They tried out “asker,” “erotreme,” “mark of interrogation,” “quaestio,” “interrogative point,” and “question stop,” before settling on the term “question mark.” Crystal cites the OED for authority that we didn’t finally agree on this term until the dawn of the Twentieth Century.

Grammarians also wandered a bit before settling on the question mark’s shape. Sources vary on how we arrived at the present form. Some suggest that the curved body mimics the bend of a cat’s tail when a feline becomes inquisitive.¹  While the cat-tail tale makes a good story for a Halloween blog, it lacks real academic support. Alcuin of York deployed the tilde shape, the outside end rising slightly like a lightning bolt. (a good design for prompting readers to employ an upward inflection.) Others wrote the word quaestio at the end of the sentence to signify a question. Over time, quaestio got reduced to a “q” above the “o.” Draw it out on a piece of paper. The shape is not far from a modern question mark.

Printers also may have influenced the design of our current interrogatory symbol. The theory goes like this. Most of the early printed publications were Bibles and other religious texts. Generally, they don’t contain many questions. Therefore, the number of question marks in a printer’s inventory of type was relatively small. When plays began to be published, the need increased. Plays are often full of questions. 

Think Shakespeare. "To be or not to be?" 

English grammar and spelling remained fluid. Printers improvised. Some flipped a semicolon to extend their stock of moveable type.

Finally, writers and grammarians puzzled through when to use a question mark. Although Gertrude Stein may think the question is obvious, rhetorical questions, in particular, pose an issue. What to do when someone is using the question form but not really asking a question? We’ve all likely experienced times when we’re simultaneously asked and told.

“You’re doing the dishes, aren’t you”

Can a question not be a question? And if it isn’t, how should it be punctuated?

In 1962, an American advertiser, Martin K. Speckter, proposed the interrobang (or interabang) as the solution, a punctuation symbol combining the question mark and the exclamation point. ‽ The interrobang was intended to indicate questions for which no answer was expected, or questions posed with excitement or disbelief. (Rejected names for the interrobang included ‘exclarogative’ and ‘consternation mark.’ After a flurry of interest, the symbol faded. As writers we’re back to the classical toolbox of punctuation marks. The question of how to properly punctuate these sentences remains.

How do you think we should handle them?

Do you have a punctuation mark you find positively revolting? 

Until next time.

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1. Thanks to the Burbank Leader and Wikipedia for this feline tidbit.