who found the question mark "?" ?
By mtsandeep
@mtsandeep (1586)
India
3 responses
@iamcucu (194)
• China
14 Dec 08
I look it up in WiKi...
[i]Another hypothesis about the origin of the question mark proposes that it originated in the 9th century,when it appeared as an exclamation point with a curved bar (like a tilde written slantwise)in order to reflect the intonation of the speaker.Lynne Truss attributes an early form to Alcuin of York.Truss describes the punctus interrogativus of the late 700s as "a lightning flash,striking from right to left." The name "question mark" was coined in the late 1800s.
Yet another view is that the question mark simply inverts the semicolon, which marked interrogative clauses in Ancient Greek (while enlarging the upper portion).
The origin of the question mark has also been associated with early musical notation like neumes.An American superstition that movies or television shows with question marks in the title do poorly at the box office has made many studios shy away from the punctuation mark. This has caused many works to be retitled when adapted for American cinema, such as the book Who Censored Roger Rabbit?,which was retitled Who Framed Roger Rabbit (without the question mark) for the big screen.[/i]
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
14 Dec 08
The most convincing argument is that the question mark comes from a cursive form of the letter "Q", an abbreviation for the Latin 'quaestio' meaning 'question'. 'Quaestio' was written as the letter 'Q' with a small 'o' below it and this developed into the punctuation mark we know today.
@kun2349 (23381)
• Singapore
14 Dec 08
haha.. I dunno.. I have never thought of it, and i'm not that interested to know about it.. hehe ^_^ Because if i do, i will be going into alot of things related to numbers, alphabets etc.. lol =D It's just too much, so i will only wanna know the basic of all these complicated matters.. haha
All i know is that, everything that we use and learn, are for a purpose, and since i know the purpose of it, i will not go back to the history of them.. haha