# ?

| ? | U+003F, &#63; QUESTION MARK |
| ← > [U+003E] | Basic Latin | @ → [U+0040] |
| Text style | Emoji style |
| ❓︎ | ❓️ |
| Text style is forced with ⟨&#xFE0E;⟩ and emoji style with ⟨&#xFE0F;⟩. ||
| ❓ U+2753, &#10067; BLACK QUESTION MARK ORNAMENT ← ❒ [U+2752] Dingbats ❔ → [U+2754] ||
| Text style | Emoji style |
| ❔︎ | ❔️ |
| Text style is forced with ⟨&#xFE0E;⟩ and emoji style with ⟨&#xFE0F;⟩. ||
| ❔ U+2754, &#10068; WHITE QUESTION MARK ORNAMENT ← ❓ [U+2753] Dingbats ❕ → [U+2755] ||
| ︖ | U+FE16, &#65046; PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL QUESTION MARK |
| ← ︕ [U+FE15] | Vertical Forms | ︗ → [U+FE17] |
| ﹖ | U+FE56, &#65110; SMALL QUESTION MARK |
| ← ﹕ [U+FE55] | Small Form Variants | ﹗ → [U+FE57] |
| ？ | U+FF1F, &#65311; FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK |
| ← ＞ [U+FF1E] | Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms | ＠ → [U+FF20] |

## Translingual
### Etymology

There are two primary theories of the origin of the question mark. One is that ⟨?⟩ descends from the punctus interrogativus ⟨⹔⟩, which instructed the reader (or singer) to raise the pitch of their voice while coming to a stop.
Another theory is that it derives from ${\overset {Q}{o}}$, an abbreviation of Latin quaestiō (“question”), placed at the end of a question to mark it as such, and analogous to the derivation of ⟨!⟩.
There are no documented intermediary forms to support one theory over the other.

### Punctuation mark

? (English name question mark)
* Used in various left-to-right scripts, including notably the Latin script, to mark the preceding sentence as a question.
* (comics, Internet slang) Used by itself to convey that the speaker is confused.
    Character #1: "I have no time to explain! Have you seen a Big Bad Wolf blowing down various houses?"
    Character #2: "?"
* (linguistics) Marks the following word or phrase as questionable for a grammatical or semantic-pragmatic reason.
** 2006, Renaat Declerck, Susan Reed, Bert Cappelle, “The Grammar of the English Verb Phrase”, in The Grammar of the English Tense System, volume 1 (in English), →ISBN, page 6:A superscript question mark will be used similarly to indicate that a sentence or constituent is questionable for a grammatical or semantic-pragmatic reason. A double superscript question mark indicates an even higher degree of questionability. I have never { worked / $^?$been working } on a dissertation This time tomorrow I { will / $^{??}$am going to } be driving to London.

#### See also

* For the reversed question mark used in some right-to-left scripts, such as the Arabic script, see ؟.

### Symbol

* A placeholder for an unknown word, phrase, text, or numerical value.
** 2009, Terry Stickels, Math Puzzles and Brainteasers, Grades 3-5: Over 300 Puzzles that Teach Math and Problem-Solving Skills (in English), John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 6:What is the next number in the sequence below? 1 4 9 16 25 36  ?
* (chess) Indicator of a bad move.
* (programming) A wildcard for one character in query language.
* (programming) The ternary operator in some programming languages.
* (regular expressions) Detects zero or one occurrences of the preceding element.
    The string colou?r matches both "color" and "colour".
* (networking) In a URL, begins a query string (a series of data formatted as field-value pairs).
    https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Word_of_the_day&action=view

#### Usage notes

* Its English name is variously question mark, interrogation mark, interrogation point, eroteme.

#### Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:?.

#### See also

* ¿ ? (Spanish)
* ؟ (Arabic/Persian)
* ？ (CJK)
* ; (Greek)
* ՞ ($^?$) (Armenian)
Punctuation
* apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ )
* curly brackets or braces (US) ( { } )
* square brackets or brackets (US) ( [ ] )
* colon ( : )
* comma ( , )
* dashes ( ‒ ) ( – ) ( — ) ( ― )
* ellipsis ( … )
* exclamation mark ( ! )
* fraction slash ( ⁄ )
* guillemets ( « » ) ( ‹ › )
* hyphen ( - ) ( ‐ )
* interpunct ( · )
* interrobang (rare) ( ‽ )
* brackets or parentheses (US, Canada) ( ( ) )
* full stop or period (US, Canada) ( . )
* question mark ( ? )
* quotation marks (formal) ( ‘ ’ ‚ ) ( “ ” „ )
* quotation marks (informal, computing) ( " ) ( ' )
* semicolon ( ; )
* slash or stroke (UK) ( / )
* space ( ] [ )

### References

* ↑ Alexander Humez, 1987, A B C et cetera: the life & times of the Roman alphabet

## English
### Noun

? (plural ?s)
* (text messaging) A question.
    i hav a ? 4 uI have a question for you
* objects seen/shaped as the question mark
    a ? blocka question-mark block

### Adjective

? (comparative more ?, superlative most ?)
* (LGBTQ) Abbreviation of questioning. (Can we verify this sense?)

## Spanish
### Punctuation mark

* Used in ¿ ?
* (nonstandard) Marks a preceding passage as a question, without the starting ¿, as in English and other languages
    Cómo estás? ― How are you?

#### Usage notes

* As SMS messaging and other forms of electronic communication have become more common, some Spanish-speakers use only ? for questions and ! for exclamations, leaving out the initial typographical mark. This is considered non-standard usage.