The Punctuation We Left Behind

In Technical Writing, we keep our punctuation simple. A period, a comma, a colon — the standard set does the job. Style guides like the Microsoft Writing Style Guide lay out exactly which marks to use and when. During review, we strip anything non-standard in documentation to stay consistent and accessible. But outside our deliverables — in Teams threads, in comments on drafts, in quick messages to SMEs — something is missing. We type “Really???” when a single mark could do the work. “(Just to clarify — not sarcasm)” shouldn’t have to exist. The thing is, marks designed to handle exactly this existed once. They just didn’t survive.

In 1962, advertising executive Martin K. Speckter created the interrobang (‽) — a combination question mark and exclamation point for incredulous questions. Remington even made typewriter keys with it.

By 1970, it was dead. Typewriters couldn’t standardize it. Printers didn’t want new typesetting costs.

Now open any Reddit thread:

“You actually believe that???”

“Are you serious?!?”

“What the hell?!!”

We’re manually reconstructing the interrobang through repetition and awkward combinations. The solution existed, but we killed it for mechanical reasons. Now we’re reinventing it badly.

The Marks That Died

Manicule (☞)

A pointing hand symbol used from the 12th through 18th centuries to mark important passages. It died because it was too labor-intensive for mass printing, and every printer did it differently.

Though now we have it reincarnated in the form of emoji pointing finger 👉

Pilcrow (¶)

Originally marked thought breaks, not just formatting breaks. We now use paragraph breaks for both visual spacing and logical topic shifts, which creates ambiguity.

The pilcrow got simplified to just a formatting marker.

Percontation point (⸮)

A 16th-century mark for rhetorical questions. Henry Denham used it in English printing around 1580. It distinguished “Can you believe this⸮” (rhetorical) from “Can you explain this?” (expects an answer).

Printers dropped it during standardization because it looked too similar to existing punctuation.

Irony mark / Point d’ironie (⸮)

Alcanter de Brahm proposed this in 1899 as a reversed question mark signaling ironic intent.

“That restaurant was amazing⸮” would tell readers you meant the opposite.

It never caught on because it looked too similar to a regular question mark when handwritten.

What We Lost

Here’s text using these marks:

The car dealer said this was the best deal they’d ever offered⸮ They promised zero hidden fees⸘ And I’m supposed to trust this‽ Maybe I should just pay cash. Or should I⸮

Same text without the old marks:

The car dealer said this was the best deal they’d ever offered. They promised zero hidden fees. And I’m supposed to trust this? Maybe I should just pay cash. Or should I?

Without the marks, you can’t tell:

1. Which statements are ironic (⸮) versus genuine.
2. Which are asserted with confidence (⸘) versus uncertainty.
3. Which questions are incredulous (‽) versus genuine inquiries.

How We Replaced Them

For irony/sarcasm:

• Tagging “it’s sarcasm” (or “/s” on Reddit) at end of the post
• Emojis like “🙄”, “🤡” or “🙃”
• aLtErNaTiNg cApS

For incredulous questions:

• “What???” or “What?!!”

For certainty:

• ALL CAPS
• Bold text

For rhetorical questions:

• Self-answering: “Should I trust this? Of course not.”

For attention:

• “👉” or “❗” emoji
• “READ THIS”

These work but they’re inefficient. “???” conveys intensity but not the specific semantics of incredulity versus confusion.

When Miscommunication Happens

Look at this actual exchange:

Comment: “Well, that worked out perfectly.” Reply: “I know, right? Sometimes things just fall into place.” Original: “I was being sarcastic; it was a complete disaster.”

Or this one:

Comment: “So we’re just going to ignore the obvious problem here?” Reply: “No, I don’t think anyone is ignoring it” Original: “That was rhetorical”

We’re writing in registers that mimic speech (informal, rapid, unedited) but without speech’s prosodic information.

Why Emojis Succeeded Where Punctuation Failed

Emojis solve the same problem: encoding emotional and tonal information. “I’m fine 💪” versus “I’m fine 😐” versus “I’m fine 💀”

Why emojis won:

Visual obviousness: 💪 looks full of energy, 💀 looks disastrous. ‽ and ⸮ require explanation.

Platform integration: Apple, Google, Microsoft built them into keyboards.

Social momentum: Emojis became popular in texting before formal writing, bypassing institutional gatekeepers.

Vague semantics: 🙂 might mean friendly, awkward, ironic, or passive-aggressive depending on context.

What Unicode Supports

Right now, you can use:

• Interrobang: ‽ (U+203D)
• Irony mark: ⸮ (U+2E2E)
• Manicule: ☞ (U+261E)
• Pilcrow: ¶ (U+00B6)

Most fonts support them. We just don’t use them ¯_(ツ)_/¯

What Might Work

and @ mentions started as user conventions that spread organically until platforms eventually formalized them as official features.

Could the same happen with ‽ or ⸮? Maybe. But more likely, we’ll keep using “???” and “it’s sarcasm” because they already work everywhere. The interrobang exists in Unicode, you can type it right now, yet nobody does that.

Emojis won because they snuck in through the side door — phones, not formal writing. Specialized punctuation asks for permission, the language rarely grants it.

Which is ironic for an industry that standardized curly quotes, em dashes, and non-breaking spaces. We’ll debate Oxford commas for hours, but we drew the line at marks that carry tone — and then spent fifty years inventing workarounds.

Every style guide tells you which marks to use. None of them tell you how to signal tone. Next time you can’t tell if a reviewer’s “Interesting approach” is a compliment or a polite rejection, ask yourself — is that a writing problem, or a punctuation problem?

—

Thanks for reading to the end.

I regularly run experiments with language, LLMs, and ideas in the open.

Follow my articles to stay in the loop:

https://medium.com/@tomasz.konecki/subscribe