Word: interabang
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Apropos of "New Punctuation Mark" [July 21]: no doubt the interabang fills the need of some writers, although I can usually make do with a simple exclamation point. More needful, I think, is the pronequark. The kind of sentence that demands the pronequark arises quite frequently. It looks like this: "May I ask you to print this in an early issue...
Thanks to the American Type Founders Co., Inc., an easy solution is at hand: the interabang, , a punctuation mark included in a new A.T.F. type face called Americana. The symbol was invented by Martin K. Speckter, an advertising-agency president and hobbyist printer, who had long brooded over the proper punctuation for such rhetorical questions of daily life as "Who forgot to put gas in the car" or "What the hell." Speckter's device, which he prefers to call the interrobang ("bang" is printer's slang for an exclamation point), remained just an idea until Detroit Graphic Artist...
...interabang gains the acceptance of grammarians, printers and writers, it will be the first punctuation symbol to enter the printed language since the introduction of the quotation mark during the late 17th century. Some typographical experts have already hailed its unique ability to express the ambiguity, not to mention the schizophrenia, of modern life. The interabang, cracks Harvard University Press's monthly bulletin the Browser, "might with profit appear editorially at the end of all remarks from the political platform and the pulpit...
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