The rhetorical question mark or percontation point was invented by Henry Denham in the 1580s and was used at the end of a rhetorical question; however, its use died out in the 17th century. It was the reverse of an ordinary question mark, so that instead of the main opening pointing back into the sentence, it opened away from it. This character can be represented using the reversed question mark (βΈ®) found in Unicode as U+2E2E. The percontation point is analogous to the Irony mark, but these are very rarely seen.
Rhetorical questions in some (informal) situations can use a bracketed question mark, e.g. "Oh, really(?)", for example in 888 subtitles.
The question mark can also be used as a meta-sign to signal uncertainty regarding what precedes. It is usually put between brackets (?). The uncertainty may concern either a superficial (such as unsure spelling) or a deeper truth (real meaning) level.
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Famous quotes containing the words question mark, rhetorical question, rhetorical, question and/or mark:
“The question mark is alright when it is all alone when it
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—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Art has always been this—pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric—whatever else it may have been obliged by social reality to appear.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“Whoever inquires about our childhood wants to know something about our soul. If the question is not just a rhetorical one and the questioner has the patience to listen, he will come to realize that we love with horror and hate with an inexplicable love whatever caused us our greatest pain and difficulty.”
—Erika Burkart (20th century)
“I am glad I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“You give them something to eat.””
—Bible: New Testament, Mark 6:37.
Jesus to the apostles after they tried to get Jesus to feed the crowd.