Can You Teach an Old Author New Tricks?

Have you seen this kind of punctuation in books?

Oh, wait. Maybe I should have exclaimed the question.

*take two*

Have you seen this kind of punctuation used in books?!


Oh. Well, I haven't. Sorry. But apparently they're real and they're spectacular. LOL


How did I just find this out? Well, we were having a discussion about this at my critique group the other day because one of my friends saw a sentence like that in a book. Well, we all agreed it looked totally wrong and unprofessional, and how could a publisher publish something like that, etc... And then we later found out it was totally right and perfectly professional.


Ooops. Our bad. You learn something new every day. :)


Ending a sentence with a combination of a question mark and an exclamation mark is actually called an Interrobang.

You use an interrobang to end a sentence that asks a question with excitement or disbelief.

As in...

Can you believe I just discovered this now?!

or

Wow, how could I have been so stupid?!

I guess that goes to show you, you can teach an old author (not that I'm old!) new tricks.

Did you know what an interrobang was? Have you used them in your own writing?