‽ Interrobang (ALT+8253)

Why don’t our keyboards have the interrobang?

Thats what a friend of mine asked. Here’s my best answer in layman’s terms. As always, it is open to arguments from the floor, but I’m skirting over details in order to provide a full answer that isn’t too much techno-babble.

The short answer is… they do!!! (ALT+8253) But, here’s the long answer (in 5 steps).

Follow up:

1. First, computers use binary…

Computers are made up of electronic bits that are either ON or OFF (like a light bulb). Each bit can be represented by 1 for ON, or 0 for OFF.

While it is difficult to make sentences that people can read with ONEs and ZEROs … us math and computer types know that having two options to write numbers (0 or 1) is not fundamentally different from having ten (0 through 9).

In Decimal (Base 10), each number is written as a power of 10. We know this without having to think about it. For example…

347 = (3 x 100) + (4 x 10) + (7 x 1)

Or as they taught us in primary school, There is a 3 in the hundreds place, a 4 in the tens place, and a 7 in the ones place.

From a mathematician’s perspective…

347 = (3 x 10²) + (4 x 10¹) + (7 x 10⁰)

Binary (Base 2) does the same thing, except instead of using 10, it uses 2.

110 = (1 x 4) + (1 x 2) = (0 x 1) = 6 (that is, six in decimal)
or..
110 = (1 x 2²) + (1 x 2¹) + (0 x 2⁰)

Here’s a binary to decimal converter.

2. Second, binary is grouped into bytes…

As I said earlier, it is difficult to make readable sentences with binary. So first we need to group the bytes into sets that make more sense.

A group of four bits in a row gives a possibility of 16 different numbers.

0000 = (0 x 2³) + (0 x 2²) + (0 x 2¹) + (0 x 2⁰)
     = (0 x 8) + (0 x 4) + (0 x 2) + (0 x 1) = 0

up to

1111 = (1 x 2³) + (1 x 2²) + (1 x 2¹) + (1 x 2⁰)
     = (1 x 8) + (1 x 4) + (1 x 2) + (1 x 1) = 15

And so, with 4 bits, we have 16 possible numbers… 0 to 15

(These 16 possibilities allow us another number system called hexidecimal, but thats a discussion for another time)

When you group 8 bits together, it is called a byte.
And so, with 8 bits (or one byte) we have 256 possible numbers… 0 to 255

(We write the 8 bits as 2 groups of 4 just to make it easier to read)

Again, it is ‘0000 0000′ to ‘1111 1111′ (0 to 255).

0000 0000 = 0 in decimal
1111 1111 = 255 in decimal

3. Bytes are then used to represent letters, numbers, and symbols

After all that, it is still difficult to make readable sentences with binary.

So people developing the first computers started to making a code table for representing letters. For example, say that 1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C, etc.

Then you could actually write the word ‘CAB’ with a series of numbers (312), which could then be converted to binary (’11′ ‘01′ 10′), which could then be stored in the bits in a computer… (ON ON OFF ON ON OFF).

But if everybody made their own code key, then information would not make sense when it was then transfered from one type of computer to another… so a standard key needed to be developed.

The first standard was was called the ASCII table (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) and was first published in 1963 but based on earlier similar tables used by teleprinters.

View the first published ASCII table here. (Note that in ASCII, 65 represents capital ‘A’

The ASCII tables had 128 places for letters and numbers and so used 7 bits. After several revisions, the modern version of the 7-bit ASCII table was adopted as a standard by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) during the 1960’s. (read more here) The Interrobang didn’t make it into the top 128 characters, so it was not included in ASCII.

Later, as we needed to include more characters, the extended ASCII table was adopted, which used a more computer friendly 8 bits or ‘byte’, allowing for 256 possible characters, numbers, and symbols. The Interrobang didn’t make it into the top 256, and so it was still not included extended ASCII.

As we started including more languages we soon needed more space in the standard key, especially for the characters in languages such as Chinese, Hindi, and Persian. And by the 1990s, a new standard was developed called UNICODE which uses 16 bits (with 65,536 possible characters).

For example, here is the Tamil Vowel section of the UNICODE table for an example of what is possible.

Full UNICODE table here.

In UNICODE, the Interrobang is number 8253!

4. Limitations of Keyboards and Fonts

Obviously, it is unreasonable to have a keyboard with 65,536 keys.

Standard keyboards, such as the 101-key US traditional keyboard and 104-key Windows keyboards, include alphabetic characters, punctuation symbols, numbers and a variety of function keys. (read more)

Depending on your preferences, there are a variety of keyboards you can purchase, but most keyboards offer some way to reach the ASCII or UNICODE symbol you want to use.

For example, in Windows, with most keyboards, in order to enter the Interrobang, you simply need to hold down the ALT key while entering ‘+8253′ on your numeric keypad.

But be warned, if you’re not using a font that supports UNICODE, the computer won’t be able to display it‽

Most keyboards (or via software you can download) will allow you to override or enter your own key sequences. For example, you could set your keyboard to replace ‘CTRL+ALT+I’ with the UNICODE Innterobang.

5. Finally, on the web…

One last note… on the internet, webpages use HTML (HyperText Menu Language). Like most computer languages, HTML allows you to put in special characters by using an escape sequence. (escape from regular typing in order to type special characters).

For HTML the sequence is & # NUMBERKEY ;, or more specifically for Interrobangs: & # 8253 ; (but without the spaces between them)