I just finished reading Dan Brown’s latest Robert Langdon novel, The Secret of Secrets, and there was an odd punctuation tic that kept appearing over and over: the interrobang. You may never have heard of it before, but an interrobang is a punctuation mark that combines an exclamation point and a question mark.
According to Merriam-Webster, this punctuation mark is “designed for use especially at the end of an exclamatory rhetorical question.” While the symbol used to be a question mark and exclamation mark combined as one symbol, it’s more common to see them beside each other in modern writing.
I have no issue with this punctuation mark being used by any writer to enhance what would be “an exclamatory rhetorical question.” But as I read The Secret of Secrets, it became so commonplace that it became oddly comical. There were certain pages of the book where it was used three times in a row, which seemed a bit excessive.
Did it detract from my enjoyment of the book? Not at all. But once I noticed it popping up on most pages, it was a hard thing to miss. It’s like when a particular word is used multiple times in a story; after a while, you really start to notice its presence.
The history of the interrobang dates back to 1962, and it “was coined by advertising executive Martin K. Speckter.” According to Grammarly.com, this special punctuation mark can be used in three different situations:
“[W]hen you’re asking a rhetorical question that is meant to be particularly emphatic…If a statement is both a question and an exclamation…[and] when you want to convey a heightened sense of emotion or astonishment.”
While I have seen it used sparingly in other books, Dan Brown’s The Secret of Secrets gets the prize for most uses of the interrobang in a novel. I’d love to know the reasoning behind its seemingly excessive use.
Have you read The Secret of Secrets? Did you notice the interrobangs? Have you seen it used a lot in other novels you’ve read? Leave a comment and let me know!
Happy reading, writing, and punctuating, and I’ll see you next time!
Sources:
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/punctuation-capitalization/say-what-meet-the-interrobang
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interrobang
