The Interrobang

With all this free time on my hands, I've been able to hit the gym with regularity. Results have been slow, but at least I'm not out of breath when I climb a flight of steps. The gym atmosphere has helped keep me engaged - the machines are nice and new, the staff helpful, and the other patrons are serious lifters, all of which helps to motivate my own workout. The problem with my gym is that the music selection leaves something to be desired. I'm no music junkie, and admittedly I have very little knowledge of the music world. Still, it kinda sucks when you're reaching failure on the last rep of the last set of your bench press, with every fiber in your body trembling in an effort to squeeze out just one more ounce of energy, when Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" comes on the speakers. Game over.

So I've started taking my iPod Shuffle to the gym, and rely on that to keep me motivated. It just so happens that during my last workout I decided to skip past the regular songs I have, and ended up with a podcast I've recently subscribed to. Now, I understand that working out to a podcast is high on the nerd scale, especially given what I mentioned above. But, at the risk of sounding like a complete geek, I actually enjoyed the session. The podcast I ended up listening to was that from Grammar Girl , a real-life science writer whose passion is to make grammar fun for the masses. If you think I've completely lost it and am a complete loser, check out her podcast ratings on iTunes. They're through the roof.

This particular podcast's topic was on punctuating questions. Yes, I know, fascinating. However, she mentioned what is a pet peeve of my mine - the widespread habit of ending questions full of surprise like so - "He said what?!"

People of the world - a statement is either a question, or an exclamation, and not both. Pick one. Please. Not doing so has given rise to the habit where writers feel that they can show even more surprise with, "He said what!!" And REAL surprise with, "He said what!!!" Folks, adding exclamation marks does NOT make the statement any more surprising. Nor does, "He said what???" show more complete befuddlement than the simple, "He said what?" Please, for the love of English.

But this is where Grammar Girl comes to the rescue. Apparently there is a rarely used punctuation mark designed specifically for the purpose of combining a question mark and an exclamation mark, and it comes with the beautiful name of an ... interrobang.

See how that just rolls off your tongue‽ Don't you just love it‽ Don't you agree that email communication everywhere will become just that much simpler‽ He said what‽

Yes, the interrobang simply combines the typographical question and exclamation characters to form a new one - ‽

So that's it. A long winded way for me to do my part to spread grammatical clarity through the rest of the world, and to make sure that people come to love this spurned character as one their own.

Goooo, interrobang‽