

However, the question mark may also occur at the end of a clause or phrase, where it replaces the comma

#Greek question mark coding full
In English, the question mark typically occurs at the end of a sentence, where it replaces the full stop (period). The Syriac question mark, known as the zagwa elaya ("upper pair") has the form of a vertical double dot over a word. In the early 13th century, when the growth of communities of scholars ( universities) in Paris and other major cities led to an expansion and streamlining of the book-production trade, punctuation was rationalized by assigning Alcuin's stroke-over-dot specifically to interrogatives by this time the stroke was more sharply curved and can easily be recognized as the modern question mark.Īccording to a 2011 discovery by Chip Coakley, a Cambridge University manuscript expert, Syriac was the first language to use a punctuation mark to indicate an interrogative sentence. Over the next three centuries this pitch-defining element (if it ever existed) seems to have been forgotten, so that the Alcuinesque stroke-over-dot sign (with the stroke sometimes slightly curved) is often seen indifferently at the end of clauses, whether they embody a question or not.

Lynne Truss attributes an early form of the modern question mark in western language to Alcuin of York. The question mark ? (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism ) is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages.
