#percontation point

Daily Utsu-P #215:

The percontation point, a reversed question mark and later referred to as a rhetorical question mark, was proposed by Henry Denham in the 1580s and was used at the end of a question that does not require an answer. Its use died out in the 17th century. – WTF Fun Facts

Daily Utsu-P #180:

Daily Utsu-P #205:

Daily Utsu-P #158:

The Thing About Today – September 24

September 24, 2020 Day 268 of 366

  September 24th is the 268th day of the year. It is Independence Day in Guinea-Bissau as they celebrate their separation from Portugal in 1973.

It is also Heritage Day in South Africa, Mahidol Day in Thailand, Republic Day in Trinidad and Tobago, and New Caledonia Day in (you guessed it) New Caledonia.

  In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National…

So I found this post on Pinterest (with no sourcing, as far as I could tell) and found this super interesting, so I decided to do a little digging. What I found was…

This is actually incorrect! The percontation point (or rhetorical question mark) is used to conotate a rhetorical question, or a question that doesn’t require an answer. It was proposed in the 16th century but fell out of use in the 17th century. It just looks like a backwards question mark, and as far as I could find, it goes at the end of the sentence like a normal question mark would. Example: “What did I do to deserve this⸮”

The post says that it’s a mark used to make stupid people feel stupider, but I think that’s reaching a bit, and maybe being a little too 21st century cynical on a medieval grammatical artifact. Henry Denham, the sixteenth century printer who originated the percontation mark, was worried that his readers wouldn’t be able to pick up on the rhetorical nature of a question because it’s a very subtle manner of speaking. Hence why people are often forced to say that their question was rhetorical, even verbally. Rhetorical speech doesn’t translate well to print, which is why he found it necessary to create a new sort of mark to solve the problem and indicate the meaning.

Sadly, the percontation point was unusual, making it difficult to set in traditional printing presses and thus not widespread or used for very long.

The irony mark is actually what is pictured, but it doesn’t have a fancy name. It seems to be forever confused for the percontation point, due to its similar design and purpose. However, the irony mark is a little rounder, placed further up, and proceeds the statement in order to identify its intent at the start. For example, “؟Brutus was an honorable man.” It is much younger, having been first proposed in the 19th century. Then a French author named Hervé Bazin suggested something similar in 1966. Bazin also suggested a number of other interesting forms of punctuation. If you’re interested, he published them in a book called Plumons l'Oiseau.

The irony mark is one of many attempts to connote irony, sarcasm, and other methods of non-serious speech in writing. (There are also the more modern “SarcMark” and “Snark”.) Like the percontation point, it simply wasn’t practical in typed formats and never really caught on.

You can find places to copy these punctuation marks from! Both of these should be brought back because they’re cool!And in the age of the salty salty internet, it’s so easy to recognize what the intent of the OP was.~

Some interesting reads where I found this information: Mental Floss: http://mentalfloss.com/article/12710/13-little-known-punctuation-marks-we-should-be-using ThoughtCo: https://www.thoughtco.com/percontation-mark-punctuation-1691603