up your architecture.

Today, I'd like to treat you to a short, but interesting little informative brief on something that I've been reading quite a bit about lately: alternative punctuation. I know, how exciting. But with an hour of reading here and there, I've found one of these often ill-concieved marks to be quite peculiar and smart: The Interrobang.

I defer to the always amusing Wikipedia.org for further information distribution:

American Martin K. Speckter invented the interrobang in 1962. As the head of an advertising agency, Speckter believed that advertisements would look better if copywriters conveyed surprised rhetorical questions using a single mark. He proposed the concept of a single punctuation mark in an article in the magazine TYPEtalks. Speckter solicited possible names for the new character from readers. Contenders included rhet, exclarotive, and exclamaquest, but he settled on interrobang. He chose the name to reference the punctuation marks that inspired it: interrogatio is Latin for "a rhetorical question" or "cross-examination";[2] bang is printers' slang for the exclamation point. Graphic treatments for the new mark were also submitted in response to the article.[3]

A sentence ending with an interrobang either (1) asks a question in an excited manner, (2) expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or (3) asks a rhetorical question.

For example:

How much did you spend on those shoes‽
You're going out with her‽
She did what‽

...brilliant.

=============================================

Design Studio Poetry Corner for 06 February:

Misgivings by William Matthews (for my Minnesota readers, does he look a bit like Gunther Dittmar or is it just me?)

"Perhaps you'll tire of me," muses
my love, although she's like a great city
to me, or a park that finds new
ways to wear each flounce of light
and investiture of weather.

Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think,
but I know what she fears: plans warp,
planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away
by floods. And worse than what we can't
control is what we could; those drab
scuttled marriages we shed so
gratefully may auger we're on our owns

for good reason. "Hi, honey," chirps Dread
when I come through the door; "you're home."
Experience is a great teacher
of the value of experience,
its claustrophobic prudence,
its gloomy name-the-disasters-

in-advance charisma. Listen,
my wary one, it's far too late
to unlove each other. Instead let's cook
something elaborate and not
invite anyone to share it but eat it
all up very very slowly.