Question mark
A
question mark is a
punctuation mark or, more pedantically, a tone mark. It is a full stop, like a
period used in interrogatory sentences, such as "Where did you get that hat?" In US English it is also called a
query.
The symbol is generally thought to originate from the Latin quæstio, meaning question, which was abbreviated to 'Qo', which was transformed into the symbol.
In some languages, most notably Spanish, a sentence (or sometimes a phrase) ending in an question mark must also begin with an inverted question mark, ¿.
See also: exclamation mark, full stop
In
computer programming, the
question mark corresponds to
Unicode and
ASCII character 63, or
0x003F.
For the rock music band, see
? & the Mysterians.