noun
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question
——
If you didn’t know this word, you’re welcome. If you did, why have you been withholding such an awesome word from my vocabulary? There’s an interesting connotation to the word, and I use the “?!” all the time (without the special typeface).
Waterstone’s are now Waterstones. They’ve decided to drop the apostrophe. I was asked to go on World at One today to discuss this with John Humphrys. John’s position is that the apostrophe saves us from some ambiguity and this is a good thing. Anything that saves us from some ambiguity is a good thing. What’s more, there are rules. All we have to do is learn the rules. I don’t want to misrepresent him, so apologies if I have.
My position is that the apostrophe is on the way out. It’s an inconsistent item anyway; it was invented by printers - not grammarians or linguists - and like a lot of other ‘rules’ of punctuation is modified by use. No bad thing.
Michael Rosen: The Politics (and lies) of the Apostrophe (via irunfrombears)
I’m not as tied to the apostrophe as I am to the Oxford Comma, but damn.
(via irunfrombears)
Mlle Hazelwood
Reader & Writer, Master of Fine Arts, Collaborator on Structure and Style, a new poetry blog.
