Inverted question and exclamation marks

The inverted question mark, ¿, and inverted exclamation mark, ¡, are punctuation marks used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences or clauses in Spanish and some languages which have cultural ties with Spain, such as Asturian and Waray languages. The initial marks are mirrored at the end of the sentence or clause by the ordinary question mark, ?, or exclamation mark, !.

Inverted marks are supported by various standards, including ISO-8859-1, Unicode, and HTML. They can be entered directly on keyboards designed for Spanish-speaking countries.

Usage


The inverted question mark ¿ is written before the first letter of an interrogative sentence or clause to indicate that a question follows. It is a rotated form of the standard symbol "?" recognized by speakers of other languages written with the Latin script. A normal question mark is written at the end of the sentence or clause.

Inverted punctuation is especially critical in Spanish (although Portuguese and Italian are also prone to the following syntax structure) since the syntax of the language means that both statements and questions or exclamations could have the same wording. "Do you like summer?" and "You like summer." are translated respectively as "¿Te gusta el verano?" and "Te gusta el verano." (There is not always a difference between the wording of a yes–no question and the corresponding statement in Spanish.)

In sentences that are both declarative and interrogative, the clause that asks a question is isolated with the starting-symbol inverted question mark, for example: "Si no puedes ir con ellos, ¿quieres ir con nosotros?" ("If you cannot go with them, would you like to go with us?"), not "¿Si no puedes ir con ellos, quieres ir con nosotros?" This helps to recognize questions and exclamations in long sentences.

Unlike the ending marks, which are printed along the baseline of the text, the inverted marks (¿ and ¡) descend below the line.

History
Inverted marks, simple in the era of hand typesetting, were originally recommended by the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), in the second edition of the Ortografía de la lengua castellana (Orthography of the Castilian language) in 1754 recommending it as the symbol indicating the beginning of a question in written Spanish—e.g. "¿Cuántos años tienes?" ("How old are you?"; lit. 'How many years do you have?'). The Real Academia also ordered the same inverted-symbol system for statements of exclamation, using the symbols "¡" and "!".

These new rules were slowly adopted; there are 19th-century books in which the writer uses neither "¡" nor "¿".

Outside of the Spanish-speaking world, John Wilkins proposed using the inverted exclamation mark "¡" as a symbol at the end of a sentence to denote irony in 1668. He was one of many, including Desiderius Erasmus, who felt there was a need for such a punctuation mark, but Wilkins' proposal, as was true of the other attempts, failed to take hold.

Adoption
Some writers omit the inverted question mark in the case of a short unambiguous question such as: "Quién viene?" ("Who comes?"). This is the criterion in Galician and formerly in Catalan. Certain Catalan-language authorities, such as Joan Solà i Cortassa, insist that both the opening and closing question marks be used for clarity. The current Institute for Catalan Studies prescription is never to use the inverted marks for Catalan.

Some Spanish-language writers, among them Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), refuse to use the inverted question mark.

It is common on social media to omit the inverted question mark since it saves typing time. Some also use the ending symbol for both beginning and ending, like this: "?Por qué dices eso?". Others may even use both the opening and closing question marks, but at the end of the sentence, giving "Por qué dices eso¿?" or "Por qué dices eso?¿".

Mixtures
It is acceptable in Spanish to begin a sentence with an opening inverted exclamation mark ("¡") and end it with a question mark ("?"), or vice versa, for statements that are questions but also have a clear sense of exclamation or surprise such as: ¡Y tú quién te crees? ("And who do you think you are?!"). Normally, four signs are used, always with one type in the outer side and the other in the inner side (nested) (¿¡Y tú quién te crees!?, ¡¿Y tú quién te crees?! )

Unicode 5.1 also includes, which is an inverted version of the interrobang, a nonstandard punctuation mark used to denote both excitement and a question in one glyph. It is also known as a "gnaborretni" (interrobang spelled backwards).

Encodings
¡ and ¿ are in the "Latin-1 Supplement" Unicode block,  which is inherited from ISO-8859-1:

Typing the character


¿ and ¡ are available in all keyboard layouts designed for Spanish-speaking countries. Smart phones typically offer these if you hold down or  in the on-screen keyboard. Auto-correct will often turn a normal mark typed at the start of a sentence to the inverted one.

On systems with an AltGr key (actual or emulated via right Alt key) and Extended ( or 'International') keyboard mapping set, the symbols can be accessed directly, though the sequence varies by OS and locality: for example on Windows and US-International, use and ; on ChromeOS with UK-Extended, use  and.