¿

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¿ is an upside down ?.

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Why¿

The inverted question mark (¿) is a punctuation mark indicating a question and is placed before the first letter of an interrogative sentence or clause. It is an inverted form of the standard symbol '?', recognized by speakers of other languages using the Latin alphabet. In most languages, a single question mark is used and only at the end of an interrogative sentence: "How old are you?" This was also once true for Spanish. The inverted question mark was not adopted until long after the decision of the Real Academia in the second edition of La Ortografía de la Real Academia (1754) to recommend it as the symbol indicating the beginning of a question in written Spanish — ¿Cuántos años tienes? ("How old are you?").

How2

"¿" is available in all keyboard layouts for Spanish-speaking countries.

Windows

On English keyboards under Microsoft Windows, the inverted question mark can be entered by holding down the Alt key and pressing 0191, 168, or 5544 on the number pad. The inverted exclamation point can be entered by holding down the Alt key and pressing 0161, 173 or 8877 on the number pad.

Other

On the Mac OS X platform (or when using the "US International"/us-intl keyboard layout on Windows and Linux), "¡" and "¿" can be entered by pressing Alt (option) + 1 and Shift + Alt (option) + / respectively. With a compose key, for example, <LEFT SHIFT> + <RIGHT CTRL> , they can be entered by pressing the compose key and ! or ? twice.

In LaTeX documents, the "¿" is written as "?`" (question mark, backtick), and "¡" as "!`" (exclamation point, backtick).

See Also

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