?

See also: Appendix:Variations of "?"

? U+003F, ? QUESTION MARK ← > [U+003E] Basic Latin @ → [U+0040]

❓ U+2753, ❓ BLACK QUESTION MARK ORNAMENT ← ❒ [U+2752] Dingbats ❔ → [U+2754]

❔ U+2754, ❔ WHITE QUESTION MARK ORNAMENT ← ❓ [U+2753] Dingbats ❕ → [U+2755]

︖ U+FE16, ︖ PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL QUESTION MARK ← ︕ [U+FE15] Vertical Forms ︗ → [U+FE17]

﹖ U+FE56, ﹖ SMALL QUESTION MARK ← ﹕ [U+FE55] Small Form Variants ﹗ → [U+FE57]

？ U+FF1F, ？ FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK ← ＞ [U+FF1E] Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms ＠ → [U+FF20]

Translingual

Presentations of ❓︎

Text style	Emoji style
❓︎	❓️
Note: Character's appearance may be different on each system. Text style is forced with ︎ and emoji style with ️

Presentations of ❔︎

Text style	Emoji style
❔︎	❔️
Note: Character's appearance may be different on each system. Text style is forced with ︎ and emoji style with ️

Etymology

? may derive from Qo, with the Q written over the o, an abbreviation of Latin quaestio (“question”), placed at the end of a question to mark it as such.

Punctuation mark

? (English name question mark)

1. Used in various left-to-right scripts, including notably the Latin script, to mark the preceding sentence as a question.
2. (comics, Internet slang) Used by itself to convey that the speaker is confused.

   Character #1: "I have no time to explain! Have you seen a Big Bad Wolf blowing down various houses?"

   Character #2: "?"

3. (linguistics) Marks the following word or phrase as questionable for a grammatical or semantic-pragmatic reason.
   • 2006, Renaat Declerck, Susan Reed, Bert Cappelle, “The Grammar of the English Verb Phrase”, in The Grammar of the English Tense System, volume 1 (in English), →ISBN, page 6:

     A superscript question mark will be used similarly to indicate that a sentence or constituent is questionable for a grammatical or semantic-pragmatic reason. A double superscript question mark indicates an even higher degree of questionability.
     I have never { worked / ^?been working } on a dissertation
     This time tomorrow I { will / ^??am going to } be driving to London.

See also

• For the reversed question mark used in some right-to-left scripts, such as the Arabic script, see ؟.

Symbol

?

1. A placeholder for an unknown word, phrase, text, or numerical value.
   • 2009, Terry Stickels, Math Puzzles and Brainteasers, Grades 3-5: Over 300 Puzzles that Teach Math and Problem-Solving Skills (in English), John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 6:

     What is the next number in the sequence below?
     1    4    9    16    25    36     ? 

2. (chess) In algebraic notation, marking a bad move.
3. (programming) A wildcard for one character in query language.
4. (programming) The ternary operator in some programming languages.
5. (regular expressions) Detects zero or one occurrences of the preceding element.

   The string colou?r matches both "color" and "colour".

6. (networking) In a URL, begins a query string (a series of data formatted as field-value pairs).

   https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Word_of_the_day&action=view

Usage notes

• Its English name is variously question mark, interrogation mark, interrogation point, eroteme.

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:?.

Derived terms

• (?)

See also

• ¿ ? (Spanish)
• ??
• ?!
• !
• !?
• ‽
• !!
• ؟ (Arabic/Persian)
• ？ (CJK)
• ; (Greek)
• ՞ (Armenian)
• ⸮

Punctuation

• apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ )
• curly brackets or braces (US) ( { } )
• square brackets or brackets (US) ( [ ] )
• colon ( : )
• comma ( , )
• dashes ( ‒ ) ( – ) ( — ) ( ― )
• ellipsis ( … )
• exclamation mark ( ! )
• fraction slash ( ⁄ )
• guillemets ( « » ) ( ‹ › )
• hyphen ( - ) ( ‐ )
• interpunct ( · )
• interrobang (rare) ( ‽ )
• brackets or parentheses (US, Canada) ( ( ) )
• full stop or period (US, Canada) ( . )
• question mark ( ? )
• quotation marks (formal) ( ‘ ’ ‚ ) ( “ ” „ )
• quotation marks (informal, computing) ( " ) ( ' )
• semicolon ( ; )
• slash or stroke (UK) ( / )
• space ( ] [ )

English

Noun

? (plural ?s)

1. (text messaging) A question.

   i hav a ? 4 u (I have a question for you)

2. objects seen/shaped as the question mark

   a ? block (a question-mark block)

Spanish

Punctuation mark

?

1. Used in ¿ ?
2. (nonstandard) Marks a preceding passage as a question, without the starting ¿, as in English and other languages

   Cómo estás? ― How are you?

Usage notes

• As SMS messaging and other forms of electronic communication have become more common, some Spanish-speakers use only ? for questions and ! for exclamations, leaving out the initial typographical mark. This is considered non-standard usage.

Coordinate terms

• ¿ ?
• ¡ !