a is for awesome, b is for badass - i

The interrobang is the most awesome piece of punctuation ever invented. Firstly, it’s called the interrobang, one of the coolest-sounding words ever to grace our collective ears with greatness. When this blog still only existed in my brain, for a brief while it was called Interrobang_ Then, when it started to exist in real life, it was called soup now, but that’s another story.

This story is about the interrobang. It was invented to stop people having to write:

“You want me to do what with the banana?!?!?!”

simply add an interrobang for extra awesome:

“You’re trapped in a lift with which teen pop sensation_”

The interrobang truly legitimises incredulity. Sometimes hyperbole is simply an appropriate reaction to the utter ridiculousness and/or horror of the situation, and for these times, just add an interrobang. You know it makes sense.

The beast that is the interrobang was invented by Martin Speckter, an advertising executive who was sick and tired of seeing a messy pile of question marks and exclamation marks at the end of sentences. Being a badass god amongst men, he just smashed the pair of them together like some kind of human Large Hadron Collider. Even the name is a smashing together of the alternative name for the question mark – interrogative point, and printers’ slang for the exlcamation mark – bang! Speckter actually asked his readers for suggestions for its name, some alternatives being “rhet”, “exclarotive” and “exclamaquest”, which sounds like an educational computer game from the 80s. Wisely, Specktor went with the mighty “interrobang”.

Speckter liked his punctuation tidy. I can’t argue with that. The interrobang deserves to be recognized as one of the great inventions of the 20^th Century, and for a brief period, it was. The swinging 60s were the heyday of the interrobang – it’s popularity was such that it was even included on some typewriters. Can you imagine how much I want one of those? It’s quite a lot, I can tell you…

Sadly, the interrobang was never really accepted into the general canon. It’s coolness was its downfall, and it never truly integrated with establishment punctuation. Its hippy-era popularity is now seen as nothing more than a fad. Thankfully, the level of awesome the interrobang possesses renders it failure-resistant, even in the face of rejection.

If anything, the interrobang’s fall from favour only serves to make it more awesome (if that’s even possible). It has kind of a Captain Oates “I’m going outside, I may be some time” sort of quality.  It’s time it was rescued from obscurity, though, and elevated to its rightful position as master of the sentence. To do this I propose not only reintroducing it into the world of writing, but also speech in general.

For example:

•  “The leader of the Conservative Party races pigeons_ Interrobang.”
• “Birds are really a type of dinosaur_ Interrobang.”
• “He was dressed as a clown the whole time_ Interrobang.”
• "Eels_ INTERROBANG."

Spiffy, eh?