This is the Interrobang.
Ex: WTF?!
Ex: Who the hell is this man in my house?!
Chess players could also use this one-character version of the "?!" (dubious move) or "!?" (provocative move). BTW, subjective chess notation is a worthy blog topic for another day (my brother would use it as a form of non-verbal trash talking, marking my moves with question marks and his with exclamation points).
This is the Asterism:
The Asterism is for minor breaks in text. Hmm. It has a great name, however, and comparisons to the game of Asteroids are inevitable!!!
This is the Exclamation Comma:
It was developed in Canada for two years in the 1990s. This is great for when you want to keep on yelling after expressing an idea.
Ex: I can't believe you didn't wash the dishes (exclamatory comma) especially after I was so clear about it!
It's sister mark is the Interrogative Comma, which works as above but in a question form. This novelty mark also expired in the mid-90s.
This the section sign:
It denotes a section break, most often in legal texts. It looks like a brand you might see on the haunch of a cow at the Slippery Sam ranch. Or some kind of physics notation. Or any number of things. It looks really cool, actually.
But it's pretty boring in the end.
These are my favorite weird punctuation marks. We need more them. There is too much ambiguity in written text.
Oh, wait, emoticons!
2 comments:
Emoticons are a blight upon written text. Maybe. On the other hand, I kind of find them hilarious, so--blight/hilarious. These marks are awesome, however. Why not have more punctuation marks? As if human expression should be limited by :;,.!? Clearly, not enough.
I love these! I can only imagine what Victor Borge might do with them....although they might make his head explode.
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