Interrobang

Martin K. Speckter ran an advertising agency and wanted one mark for the startled question, as in “Are you serious‽” He proposed it in 1962 in TYPEtalks, a magazine about type, and asked readers to help name it. Exclamaquest and exclarotive were among the names that lost.

For the name, Speckter joined interrogatio, the Latin for a question, with bang, which is what printers called an exclamation mark. Richard Isbell drew it into his Americana typeface for American Type Founders in 1965, and in 1968 some Remington typewriters offered an interrobang key.