Interrobang, for the Incredibility of Modern Life: Or, How to Punctuate the Zeitgeist
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INTERROBANG, FOR THE INCREDIBILITY OF MODERN LIFE: OR, HOW TO PUNCTUATE THE ZEITGEIST In 1968, Remington began promoting a new piece of JULIETTE punctuation, the Interrobang. In recalling a footnote in the history of writing, Juliette Kristensen, a KRISTENSEN material culture theorist and self-confessed print addict, asks how we had previously marked the text, and how we are punctuating it today. KIOSK. Left: An Interrobang (‽). KIOSK. 24 25 ‘May you live in interesting times’ – so the curse goes. For text was once written with no punctuation; even ing lost a hand to evolve it; the bodily notation of text And undoubtedly, this is prescient for 2008. From the the space between letters, which counts as an item of became fixed, condensed, punctual. This was cement- =^D :-{) cataclysmic devastation of large parts of Asia, to the punctuation, was missing. Whilst our reading selves find ed further into our chirographic culture in subsequent unfolding political drama in Zimbabwe, to the US presi- this strangely unsettling, we who mentally translate the centuries, most notably when we began to individually dential election and the spreading global credit crunch, spoken word into alphabetic form, identifying the sen- hammer letterforms on the page with the typewriter. this year has all the environmental, political and eco- tence once lay within the words themselves, to readers =^* :-{)} nomic markers of ‘interestingness’. Yet this year also and writers rigorously trained in the classic arts of rhet- The Emotion of Digital Punctuation marks the anniversary of another tumultuous time, in- oric and logic. teresting too for shifting the ground beneath societies’ And where are we now, in our hyper-mediated, digitised, feet: 1968. There is no punctuation in the spoken word – we do not content-atomised, always-potentially-manipulated, me- : ( :-/ insert spaces between words, nor are there question dia-saturated, user-generated, socially-networked age? This so-called Year of Revolutions saw political leaders marks, commas, periods, or exclamation marks; How much fluidity do we have with our written language? Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinated, rather these punctuating forms are indicators of tonal And more importantly, how are we punctuating it? the French rioting on the streets of Paris (if the French variation, urging the reader to interrogate, pause, break :.( :-# aren’t revolting, no-one is), and worldwide student pro- or exclaim. We are in the age of ‘reality’, an age where fact and fic- tests against the indeterminate Vietnam war, an end to tion have collapsed into one another; in navigating the which no-one could see. And it was in this year that the Monastic scribes with their rigorous reputations of map of knowledge and meaning, we can no longer see company Remington, now known for their shavers but asking questions of their texts, commentating through the North star. We are in an age of wars that do not really : | :-@ then the byword for office machines, tried to introduce writing in the margins, began to denote their questions happen, as Jean Baudrillard noted; of the factionalised a new piece of punctuation into western written script: with the letters Q and o, a shorthand for Questio, mean- ultra-violence of Grand Theft Auto, and the fictionalised Welcome to The Interrobang. ing enquiry. The Q sat above the o and through endless ultra-violence of Abu Ghraib. Incredulity is no longer an minor tweaks, adjustments and small erasures, all appropriate position – we passed it so long ago, it is only }: [ >:-< An exclamation mark superimposed over a question conducted through the fluidity of the hand writing, the a shimmering illusion in our rearview mirror. But there mark, the Interrobang was the WTF punctuating point, symbol of ? appears. Likewise, the exclamation mark are punctuating elements moving in, trying to reclaim and flowed from the pen of New York advertising man, (the bang) is a contraction of the Latin word io, meaning the territory beyond question, beyond exclamation, be- Martin Speckter, in 1962. Its name was born from slam- hurrah, that evolved from the letters i and o, the former yond a pause for thought: The emoticon. 8-) :/) ming the Latin word interrogatio, meaning to question, above the latter, to become !. into bang, a slang printing term for an exclamation mark, The new punctuation, comprised of a concatenation and was chosen by Speckter from readers’ suggestions In the movement from spoken to chirographic cultures of the textual bodily notations of the singing scribal to TYPEtalks, the magazine of the Advertising Typogra- of text, or, as Walter Ong famously noted, from orality to monk, now indicates how to read between the lines, :-D () phers Association of America he edited. But it took until literacy, reading bodies shifted position. Written texts how to read the emotion of the text, through a 90 de- 1968 for the Interrobang to find favour with Remington in oral cultures operated as aide memoires, as mate- gree head tilt. Punctuation has become an exercise in when they produced it as a key for their interchangeable rial forms designed to ignite voicing the texts. Scribes, pathognomy. With the emoticons we can smile, :-) wink type model 25 electric typewriter. and their readers, worked standing up, so that reading ;-) blush :*) mention the pope +<:-| or note that we are :-( ((())) text was a form of dancing, as media and communica- trying to lick our own face :-d. We can even use it to do That there was a synchronicity between the meaning of tion historian John Durham Peters noted in the recent design criticism. :-I the Interrobang, a mark of incredulity, and the unfolding symposium ‘Media Matters: Friedrich Kittler and Tech- events of 1968 did not pass Remington by. In fact, Rem- noculture’ (Tate Modern, 19-20 June 2008). Oftentimes emoticons are taken as part of the degen- ington claimed in its press release that the Interrobang erate language of the ‘texting’ generation, a criticism was recommended for ‘its ability to express the incred- With the ascendancy of the literate culture, the voice made by alarmed intellectuals in the face of bewildering ibility of modern life’, quoting The Browser, the bulletin became silenced and the body sat down. And as we sat (to them) contemporary mass media, as Katherine Feo for Harvard University Press, which urged that this new down and silently read, punctuation became the visual notes, in her 2006 winning article for the Winterhouse piece of punctuation ‘might with profit appear editorially markers of the dancing body, the form around which the Awards for Design Writing and Criticism ‘In Defense at the end of all remarks from the political platform and reading body structured the text; we can think of punc- of Stupidity’. But we should pay attention to this new the pulpit.’ tuation as the features of the musical score, the clef, the punctuation, and how it has become necessary to indi- bar breaks, the sharps and flats. cate which emotional state should be read into the text. Voicing Visual Literacy Because, as Martin Speckter and Remington noticed in However, as we sat down, we were increasingly reading the Year of Revolutions, the text is not enough. With Remington’s attempts in mind, it seems to nudge the products of the printing press. And as texts became us into asking where had our punctuation come from? printed, punctuation was backed into the corner, hav- May you live in interesting times. >:-> KIOSK. Above right: A series of graphic emoticons. KIOSK. 26 27.