Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Interrobang?!


I always enjoy Ben Yagoda's occasional essays on language which he writes for the NYT. Yesterday's column on the overuse of the exclamation point was particularly entertaining. In it, he brought up a term that I was previously only vaguely familiar with: the interrobang. We've all seen its use in expressions using the combo question mark and exclamation point. As in, what the?!  And is there a difference between ?! and !? - apparently there is. Wikipedia, not surprisingly, has an entry on its history and development. Is there anything Wikipedia doesn't know?!
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turquoise salmon sunset
Turquoise Salmon Sunset
Yesterday, saw this beautiful sunset in my neck of the woods. The photo here doesn't do it justice, but I can only describe it as one of those sunsets where the sky is an intense turquoise blue and the clouds a deep salmon pink (Alaskan, not Atlantic!). With most sunsets, the colors seem to meld together in various shades of red, orange, pink, a bit of blue. But this sunset seemed marked by only two distinct shades of turquoise and salmon - very startling!

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