DEAR GIRLS ASK GUYS: Please Allow Us to Type Interrobangs into Question Descriptions and Opinions

QuarterNote

One of the great things about GaG is that by asking for opinions from girls and guys; young and old; and of any country, we get an insight to their perspectives and their individual beliefs and expressions. And one of the primary ways we express ourselves on GaG is through written language.

Girls Ask Guys is by no means a model of perfectly polished language – people mispel words, use incorrect Capitalization. punctuation) orsyntax. Some use great grammar 🙂 sprinkled with emojis. Some use slang words, while others use pretentiously and bombastically elongated ones. The language we use as we write is an expression of our individuality, influenced in part by cultural backgrounds, level of education, age, or personal preferences. GaG is a collage of cultures, sharing and offering ideas, and that is beautifully illustrated in the wide array of writing styles.

I, personally, looove to express myself through punctuation. *asterisks* (great for actions), ellipses... h-h-hyphens (great for mimicking stuttering), Em dashes—they are different from En dashes, and the classic question mark (?) and exclamation point (!) can all be used in creatives ways to symbolize expression.

HOWEVER, One of the most common forms of non-traditional punctuation—used in online chats, iMessage arguments, and overly passionate bloggers across the globe—is the interrobang. I'm not talking about this character: "‽". Nobody uses that shit. I'm using the term in a wider sense to describe a exclamation point following a question mark or vice versa:

DEAR GIRLS ASK GUYS: Please Allow Us to Type Interrobangs into Question Descriptions and Opinions

And it's NOT allowed on certain Girls Ask Guys input boxes. If you try to type this: "?!" in certain input boxes (you can do it in myTakes but not in questions or opinions), an algorithm erases the exclamation point. Note that piece of code is there for good reason: to keep people from doing this...

HOW DO I LOOK ON A SCALE FROM 1-10?????????????????/

I get it... it's annoying, people can easily abuse punctuation, spammers will draw attention to their posts or questions if it was allowed, etc. etc. I'm NOT asking for this code to be erased, no no no. I just wish for there to be a way to type a question mark and exclamation point without GaG chopping off the last exclamation point or question mark and leaving it more lackluster than before. You may be thinking: why write an entire myTake asking GaG to allow your stupid interrobangs? Well, 1) their not stupid 😥 and 2) ... well, I'll give you the reasons...

Reason 0.5: They won't be obtrusive.

*ahem*

GaG PLEASE DON'T ALLOW INTERROBANGS ON QUESTION TITLES!!!

Yea, that'd be bad. I'm pretty sure we all agree that if someone wanted their question answered they'd choose to do this:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN A BOY TEXTS YOU THREE TIMES!?

over this:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN A BOY TEXTS YOU THREE TIMES?

Then, everyone would start doing that for attention. And all questions will end with "!?". Let's ONLY let people use interrobangs on myTakes (already allowed, which is interesting), Question Descriptions, Opinions, Opinion Replies, and Private Messages (obviously). Basically everything BUT Question Titles and myTake Titles.

Reason 1: It Adds Color and Context to the Question

Case 1: Storytelling

If a person is re-telling an event to preface a question or a piece of advice, an interrobang can give more dimension to the story, and therefore, make the reader more sympathetic towards that person's situation or appreciate his/her viewpoint:

*GaG user telling story of the time her boyfriend hit her. She's walking away from him*
Boy: "Stop! Please! I love you!"
Girl: "Wait, did you say you love me?"

This seems like the girl stopped in her tracks, thoroughly surprised. It's as if she truly believes that he loves her and is considering going back into the relationship. Compare that with this:

*GaG user telling story of the time her boyfriend hit her. She's walking away from him*
Boy: "Stop! Please! I love you!"
Girl: "Wait, did you say you love me?!"

Here, it's a much different emotion. She's not yelling the question out of genuine curiosity, she's dumbstruck by the ludicrousness of someone claiming he loves her after hitting her. It's as if she's heard this too many times before and is fed up. A simple exclamation point can change an interrogative from genuine curiosity to feigned curiosity or even a what-the-fuck-did-you-just-say kind of connotation.

Case 2: Question Repetition and Emotional Transitions

Repetition is a powerful literary device to convey thought. However, repeating a short question twice sounds robotic, so we naturally emphasize the second of the set in a similar way reduplication affects the first of the set in English (think: Does he like me or does he like like me?). If we don't have the option to emphasize an interrogative in a set with an exclamation point. We'll have to resort to contracting the ALL CAPS SYNDROME, which is a big leap in connotation. For example:

You wanna go, bruh? YOU WANNA GO?

Woah there! He just went from asking from a few feet away to yelling in your face like a drill sergeant. This is a more accurate picture of the situation:

You wanna go, bruh? You wanna go?!

It's a lot more realistic: asking from a few feet away, then stepping in your face a bit. Nice. With a subtle touch of ALL CAPS, you can get a more dynamic crescendo and a more layered sense of expression.

You wanna go, bruh? You wanna GO?!

Doesn't that look fun? ☺️ Not having the ability to write interrobangs clips off the ability to seamlessly transition between emotions or accurately depict certain inflections. In this particular case, it relates to repeating questions for emphasis without jumping the moon. A good metaphor to illustrate this is what happens with de-clawed cats. Cats systematically deal with threats by hissing, then scratching, then biting. If you de-claw a cat, they are forced to jump from hissing to biting, resulting in the owner being bit more often, which is nastier than being scratched. If you take away the subtlety of interrobangs, the writer has to jump from asking normally to HITTING THE ALL CAPS BUTTON IN ORDER TO EMPHASIZE A QUESTION AND THEY USUALLY DON'T TURN IT OFF AND IT GETS REALLY ANNOYING REALLY QUICKLY.

The example above is not the best example, but I'm sure you can think of more cases where questions repeat in order to emphasize sarcasm, interest/disinterest, passion, anger, apologetic-ness, etc. Language is really nuanced, so I'm not going to comb every permutation of words just to completely cover a case that's just ⅓ of Reason 1.

Case 3: Maintaining Emotional Plateaus

This ties into Case 2. Just like how the ability to put exclamation points after question marks can bridge emotional crescendos and decrescendos, interrobangs can be used to maintain a plateau of peak emotional fervor. In other words, it can help the writer "not drop the ball". Example:

*Speaker is yelling in absolute fury*
Oh, for GOD'S SAKE! Just STOP playing DUMB!! WHY are you asking what's wrong with ME? Why don't you start blaming yourself for your OWN problems?

The speaker seemed to be in absolute anger, but they sorta dropped the ball in the end due to the watery essence of a lone question mark. To maintain this emotional plateau, we would need interrobangs:

*Speaker is yelling in absolute fury*
Oh, for GOD'S SAKE! Just STOP playing DUMB!! WHY are you asking what's wrong with ME?! Why don't you start blaming yourself for your OWN problems?!

In the story, she didn't calm down at the end. And the excerpt above is a more accurate depiction of how the anger carried through the whole bout.

Reason 2: It's not that big of a task... right?

It is a lot to ask a staff of a company to write code for a Big New Feature, so that's why I'm asking for a small one that'd still make textual expression more colorful on GaG. Still, coding is hard (at least from my experience, it is). Now, the code for allowing interrobangs is already (sorta) there on myTakes.

I say "(sorta)" because I can still do this on myTakes: "Wha???????????? Heyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", which we wouldn't want in Question Descriptions and Opinions because it's borderline spam or can be used for attention grabbing.

I'm not an expert programmer by any means, but the code for allowing interrobangs would probably follow this logic:

If there's 2 or more "?"'s in a row, change it to 1 "?"

If there's 2 or more "!"'s in a row, change it to 1 "!"

If there's 3 or more "?" OR "!", pop off the the last punctuation mark(s) until there's only 2

But that's just my guess. Though, the staff of GaG could ask whoever writes the code. I don't know who they are, and I doubt any of them will read this myTake directly, but again, that's just my guess. The point is I don't know if it's a troublesome ask. I don't think it is, but if I'm wrong, and it is, then don't worry, I'm fine if it's truly too much trouble to do this.

Reason 3: It is very common

Like I said, it's used everywhere in casual, colloquial writing. Text messages, emails between friends, social media posts, etc. Language and syntax shift from generation to generation to include more slang words, quirky phrases, and other linguistic "trends". GaG isn't Grammar Nazis' Orwellian Big Brother, so I know they don't really care about making sure people place commas before their coordinating conjunctions. It's a website that cares about all sorts of people sharing ideas, so I'm sure a Descriptivist approach to language is right up their alley 😊

Conclusion

In short, please GaG, allow us to write "?!"'s and "!?"'s in ALL text boxes EXCEPT Question Titles and myTake Titles. Sincerely, a kid who's really passionate about language.

...

Jeez, did you read the whole thing?! Why, thank you.

DEAR GIRLS ASK GUYS: Please Allow Us to Type Interrobangs into Question Descriptions and Opinions
0 Opinion