{"id":1665,"date":"2025-04-13T23:06:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T23:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/?p=1665"},"modified":"2025-04-13T23:06:46","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T23:06:46","slug":"the-interrogation-mark-from-greek-semicolons-to-spanish-twists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/the-interrogation-mark-from-greek-semicolons-to-spanish-twists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Interrogation Mark: From Greek Semicolons to Spanish Twists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In ancient Greek, questions were marked by a semicolon (\u0395\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc) rather than a question mark. This practice faded over time, and no special punctuation indicated questions in antiquity. The modern <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Question_mark\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">question mark<\/a> emerged in the Middle Ages when scribes used &#8220;qo&#8221; (from Latin <em><strong>quaestio<\/strong><\/em>). To avoid confusion, they stacked the letters, turning the Q into a curl and the O into a dot, creating the question mark (&#8220;?&#8221;). In Spanish, the question mark was placed only at the end until 1754, when the <em>Ortograf\u00eda de la Real Academia<\/em> introduced the inverted opening question mark (\u00bf), as in: <em>\u00bfQu\u00e9 edad tienes?<\/em> (How old are you?).<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"850\" height=\"283\" src=\"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Interrogation-Mark-Story.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1666\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Interrogation-Mark-Story.png 850w, https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Interrogation-Mark-Story-300x100.png 300w, https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Interrogation-Mark-Story-768x256.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 850px) 100vw, 850px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In ancient Greek, questions were marked by a semicolon (\u0395\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc) rather than a question mark. This practice faded over time, and no special punctuation indicated questions in antiquity. The modern question mark emerged in the Middle Ages when scribes used&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/the-interrogation-mark-from-greek-semicolons-to-spanish-twists\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,510,171,106],"tags":[554,552,553],"class_list":["post-1665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curiosities","category-etymology","category-history","category-typography","tag-quaestio","tag-question-mark","tag-semicolon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1667,"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665\/revisions\/1667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.giannisarcone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}