Now I want a post about the irony mark.

I always liked the Inter­robang. Maybe because my school’s paper was named after it?

I like the IDEA of it anyway. If it’s gram­mat­i­cally improper to use two punc­tu­a­tion marks at the end of a sen­tence, some­times both are kind of useful.

(Some­where an eng­lish teacher wants to kick me in the teeth.)

Amen to the serial comma. I’ve long been a cham­pion of that par­tic­u­lar style and it annoys me to no end that it isn’t more widely employed.

You inspired to write my own post in sup­port of it:

http://​www.​slantsix​cre​ative.​com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​9​/​2​4​/​y​e​s​-​y​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​y​e​s​-​u​s​e​-​t​h​e​-​s​e​r​i​a​l​-​comma/

Great work as always here.

Hooray for Punc­tu­a­tion Day! And if we can get the serial comma stan­dard­ised, I’d be very happy indeed.

Another vote for the serial comma. My mother (who is an editor) has a favorite real-​world exam­ple of the perils of omit­ting the final comma. This was a ded­i­ca­tion in a book: To my par­ents, Ayn Rand and God. Assum­ing the author intended three ded­i­ca­tees and did not in fact have extra­or­di­nary parent­age, the second comma really should have been employed.

Only thing, there are just equal perils in man­dat­ing the serial comma.
If the sen­tence was “To my mother, Ayn Rand and God”, that would be pretty unam­bigu­ous, while the use of the comma would intro­duce ambi­gu­ity: “To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God” - now Ayn Rand is the second ded­i­ca­tee or the name of the first one?
As usual, there are very few absolute lan­guages rules. Most of the time, you can’t escape a “when appro­pri­ate” note.

Anyway, the inter­robang mark is really cool! Never read of it before.
To me as an euro­pean, it also look pretty amer­i­can, for the typ­i­cal emphatic and rethoric style of amer­i­can ver­nac­u­lar.

The serial comma, in my opin­ion, is really only suit­able for aca­d­e­mic pur­poses. The lan­guage has changed and many of the old rules no longer apply. These include ending sen­tences with prepo­si­tions, begin­ning sen­tences with “and”, proper use of sen­tence frag­ments and so forth. The writ­ten word is right­fully becom­ing more and more like the spoken word.

I’m no fan of the inter­robang; what­ever next!? Smi­lies, no doubt. But, yes, let’s see the serial comma as stan­dard. You must be run­ning out of avail­able slots for “National Days.”

The writ­ten word is right­fully becom­ing more and more like the spoken word.

But Mike, we have the ben­e­fit of inflec­tion and rhythm when we speak. In writ­ing we rely on punc­tu­a­tion to emu­late those things so the mes­sage and tone isn’t lost.

Good point, Stephen. I will main­tain my posi­tion, how­ever, that use of the serial comma should be at the writer’s dis­cre­tion, to be used when the format and conext are appropi­ate. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, I think it is appro­pri­ate in aca­d­e­mic, jour­nal­is­tic and offi­cial texts.

Agreed. My vote (and FontShop/FontFeed style) is to use it as a default unless it mis­con­strues the mean­ing of the sen­tence.

Hurrah for the serial comma!

I believe one proper way to clar­ify the ded­i­ca­tion, “To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God,” would be to use a semi­colon: “To my mother, Ayn Rand; and God.” If that was what you meant, of course.

@abu: There might be exam­ples that argue against the serial comma, but yours doesn’t have to be one of them, since your “To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God” should be punc­tu­ated (and phrased): “To my mother Ayn Rand and to God”

I love the inter­robang but I find the both sym­bols on one dot made by Schwartz very flashy. Do you really think his design would work better in normal copy text sizes? I believe it becomes to wide.
This is not to say I like cur­rent designs used in fonts, actu­ally the ones that mostly turn up in copy writ­ing are the plain over­lays of the 2 sym­bols which makes the excla­ma­tion mark cut trough the ques­tion mark. This is what makes it so much more fuzzy on small sizes. I believe that when it doesn’t cut it looks much better.

I’ve been an inter­robang fan (I liked it so much, I bought the com­pany!) for a long time — the handle I’m using above is the same one I’ve been using pretty much every­where online since 1998.

The serial comma is one of the few things that dis­tin­guishes us from sav­ages, ani­mals, and other such uncul­tured things.

The whole point of the exam­ple is that Ayn Rand isn’t the mother.

Look, we don’t have spe­cial “quom­mas” or “peri­o­ta­tion marks” for the com­bi­na­tion of quo­ta­tion mark + comma/period. The two marks serve dif­fer­ent func­tions, so it makes sense to keep them sep­a­rate. Same should apply to the inter­robang. Most inter­robang designs admit this truth directly by being a simple mash-​up of “?” and “!”. If they don’t add up to some­thing qual­i­ta­tively dif­fer­ent, why mash them together at all? It’s just “w” all over again. Our lan­guage doesn’t need that, people.

Another prob­lem with the inter­robang: Its design tends to imply the order “!?”. This is 100% incor­rect and rightly unac­cept­able to all freedom-​loving folk.

Unac­cept­able to all freedom-​loving folk‽ Good Heav­ens, man. Rules are meant to be broken. Besides, the interrobang’s usage was already estab­lished. That makes it tra­di­tional. ;)

Stephen, I love Schwartz’s designs. My ques­tion for you is how do we encour­age other design­ers to adopt Schwartz’s inter­pre­ta­tion? The inter­robang is already part of the Uni­code char­ac­ter set. What’s needed is a way to influ­ence design­ers to update their fonts with the new inter­robang form. What would you rec­om­mend?

Those new designs look too comic-​booky.

The inter­robang is never going to catch on. Punc­tu­a­tion is decreas­ing, not increas­ing. The semi­colon is not long for this world.

Smi­lies have a better chance of making it into type fonts than the inter­robang.

The smiley!? That bas­tard lovechild of Inchoate Thought and Lazy Impre­ci­sion?!
Heaven pre­serve us.

Thank you for appre­ci­at­ing the serial comma! I have always been taught to use it and find its lack of use dis­ap­point­ing.

Yes, yes, yes, yes to the serial comma!

Unac­cept­able to all freedom-​loving folk‽ Good Heav­ens, man. Rules are meant to be broken. Besides, the interrobang’s usage was already estab­lished. That makes it tra­di­tional. ;)