What’s with that strange sign?

It is just me, or does this sentence look a little odd?

<<¿But how much is that doggie in the window?>> demanded Claudine.

There’s something about it… but what? Aha! It looks strange because it’s using punctuation marks that come from languages other than English. Like anything to do with language, different groups of people have different ways of doing things. If you go spying inside the font options on your computer, you’ll discover several unusual kinds of punctuation from other languages that you may not have seen before.

Have a look at the sentence again, and let’s see how sharp your spying skills are. There are question marks at both the beginning and end of the question. Not only that, the question mark at the beginning is upside down. This is what you’d find if you looked at a book printed in Spanish. In an Arabic book, you might see the same question mark as in English, but pointing in the other direction and at the start of the sentence. In a Greek book, there’s a different sign altogether, what we call a semicolon. But what about those funny << >> signs? They’re speech marks. You’ll also find them in Finnish and Dutch.

Interrobang

More punctuation signs are being born all the time – just think of all the little signs you use when you’re texting.

But have you ever seen this mark?

It’s an interrobang – a punctuation mark invented by Martin Speckter in 1962. It’s for those moments when you want to use a question mark and an exclamation mark all at once. It could certainly be useful for comic book writers???

And have you ever heard of a question-comma or an exclamation-comma? These were patented by Leonard Storch, Ernst Van Haagen and Sigmund Silber in 1992, for when you want to use a question mark or an exclamation mark in the middle of a sentence.