Punctuation has always intrigued me. I ponder over such mysteries as who invented the apostrophe and why it is shaped the way it is. The origin of the ampersand, the em dash and the ellipsis —and who deemed them necessary—have me captivated.

As I researched the phenomena of obscure punctuation, I happened upon a whole new animal in the zoo of punctuation.

And Its name? The Interrobang.

The interrobang is the ingenious creation of an ad exec; a clever fellow named Martin K. Speckter. He decided that advertisements and the English language in general would be much enhanced if included was an indicator of surprise following a rhetorical question with a single character. For example: "What the heck?!" or "Are you kidding me?!"

So now that this useful item has been invented, what shall we call it?

There were many suggestions made including the exclamoquest, which is my personal favorite, rhet, which is too reminiscent of Gone With The Wind , to be taken seriously as a punctuation mark, in my opinion, and exclarotive which reminds me of an èclair. In the end, however, Mr. Spekter opted for "interrobang." And this is why: See, the Latin word interrogatio translates to English as "a rhetorical question," and bang is printing jargon for the exclamation point.

Ingenious, yes?

The interrobang was wildly popular during the 60's and mid-70's. In fact, the word itself was even found in a few dictionaries, and the interrobang character frequently appeared in newspapers and other literary publications.

But alas, not unlike plastic mini-skirts and fringed leather jackets, the illustrious interrobang's popularity was short-lived. It had enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame, and that was that. Nowadays, it is not even considered to be a real punctuation mark.

All is not lost! There is a nice selection of Interrobang-wear available online, including T-shirts, tank tops and other various and sundry items. As well, it can be found in Microsoft's Wingdings 2, and in Unicode as U+203D.