3143: Question Mark
| Question Mark |
 Title text: Although now people will realize three-per-em space that all this time I've been using weird medium mathematical space whitespace characters in my hair space hair space hair space speech dot dot dot... |
Explanation
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This is one of 52 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a BOT TIRONIAN ET ⹒ MULTIPLE HUMANS PERIOD. Don apostrophe 't remove this notice too soon period. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
In colloquial English, the phrase "question mark" is sometimes added to the end of a statement to give an exaggerated or emphasized impression of its uncertainty, as if the question mark in a written representation of the utterance should be spoken aloud instead of remaining implicit in the rising intonation. This may be to reinforce true questions in dialects that exhibit a high rising terminal even for normal statements, to signal that a sentence is meant to be interrogative despite not following the typical structure of a question, or even just for effect. Here, the phrase “[it is] maybe even the greatest movie of all time” is structured like a standard declaration of fact, and so verbalizing the question mark helps clarify that the statement is made in order to request a (hoped for) confirmation, or at least acquiescence.
This appears to be a relatively new phenomenon, at least in terms of gaining meaningful adoption, and such linguistic novelties can often cause irritation or discomfort among those outside of their usage groups. When Hairy does this, Cueball feels compelled to respond by doing the same with other punctuation marks, and even other matters of formatting, such as typographical emphasis and whitespace. Whether he does this to try to fit in, or as a form of 'revenge' for a perceived linguistic abuse is unclear.
Generally, speaking punctuation and formatting out loud is considered strange, though there are some that are accepted, and it is possible that the same will become true of "question mark" over time. Sometimes the word "period" (US English) or "full-stop" (British, Irish and Commonwealth English) is spoken at the end of a sentence, before a period, to declare that there can be not dispute nor further discussion about what is being stated. An example might be: "That's the end of the matter, we're leaving Friday, period." Other examples would be "asterisk", indicating the statement is not absolute and has caveats, such as "You should buy a ticket and see that movie - asterisk [it's kind of expensive though]", while a feeling of incompleteness or foreboding is sometimes evoked by speaking the phrase "dot dot dot" at the end of a sentence, reflecting the use of an ellipsis to indicate an unwritten continuation...
Cueball mentions the film Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, illustrating the common use of italics to indicate titles of films (as well as other works, e.g. books, albums and series, depending on the stylebook used) and colons to separate subtitles from titles. From the context, Hairy and Cueball had differently polarised opinions about the merits of this film.
The title text reads: "Although now people will realize three-per-em space that all this time I've been using weird medium mathematical space whitespace characters in my hair space hair space hair space speech dot dot dot..." Randall uses, and vocalises, three different whitespace characters in this statement. Specifically, the three-per-em space (U+2004), the medium mathematical space (U+205F) and the hair space (U+200A). Normally they'd be used for typesetting mathematical formulae and in microtypography, without any expected audible distinction or meaning beyond text-placement and alignment in printed media.
Translated, it looks like:
| Characters in title text | "Although now people will realize that all this time I’ve been using weird whitespace characters in my speech..." |
|---|---|
| Ordinary whitespace | "Although now people will realize that all this time I’ve been using weird whitespace characters in my speech..." |
Pronouncing punctuation used to be a staple of dictation, especially in the 20th century, when secretaries taking dictation to type letters were more commonplace. The expression "…, period" or "…, full stop", taken to mean "…and that's final", originates from this usage.[actual citation needed] Since Cueball is pronouncing all other punctuation marks as well, his final "period" denotes only the mark and not the common expression, especially since the latter would usually require mention of the comma before and then an additional spoken "period" after. Dictated punctuation is still used today in some software that supports speech recognition for text entry, e.g. Google Docs and many smartphone keyboard's text-to-speech functions, so a person can send a text message with the precise punctuation the speaker intends.
The Kooblen, in Phil Foglio's Buck Godot setting, speak in this way to express punctuation.
See (and hear) also Victor Borge's "Phonetic Punctuation" sketch in its various forms, in which a variety of vocal sounds are used to make punctuation explicit.
Transcript
- [Hairy and Cueball are both walking to the right.]
- Hairy: That movie was so good. Maybe even the greatest movie of all time question mark?
- Cueball: Yeah comma, but you said that about italics Charlie's Angels Colon: Full Throttle period. Paragraph break.
- Cueball: I question your judgment period.
- [Caption below the panel:]
- When people say "question mark" out loud as a rhetorical device, it always makes me want to say my other punctuation and formatting too.
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Surely it should read CharlieApostraphe’s Angels, right? KelOfTheStars! (talk) 02:30, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- You apostrophe re almast right period. tilde tilde tilde tilde 2607:FB91:7914:D333:3D03:FB75:B160:75F4 03:08, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- You still have to put the punctuation mark after the word open parenthesis (in this case comma, the apostrophe end parenthesis) btw period. tilde tilde tilde tilde TheTrainsKid (talk) 03:20, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
Someone should do a grammar tag or whatever comma, like the citation needed tag comma, that links to this comic period. tilde tilde tilde tilde TheTrainsKid (talk) 03:20, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
guys (sorry first time commenting so i know that this is formatted wrong) can we not put the names of the formatting in the discription? i literally came to this page to try to figure out what the titletext was trying to say, only to find just as much (if not more) confusion on a page that was meant to remove confusion.
- Seconded, as fun as it probably is, it's also incredibly difficult to follow. 2601:681:A80:F890:E8FF:E5A3:E698:22CF 04:38, 18 September 2025 (UTC)Bthardamz
- Mhm period. Save the flavored text for titles and the comment section period. very difficult to read ellipsis... tilde tilde tilde tilde 2605:59C8:22F0:3310:1EB6:FF4:46E:74F5 04:49, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- Even if we decide to keep it in the explanation comma, it definitely shouldn't be in the transcript period. tilde tilde tilde tilde Barmar (talk) 05:33, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- that's entirely fair comma, I got the idea to match the explanation formatting with the comic content from 1285: Third Way comma, though in that instance it's way less obtrusive period. tilde tilde tilde tilde 137.25.230.78 07:30, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- thirding the above. if i'm on this site it's so i can understand the parts of the comic that confused me. the current formatting is directly hostile to that goal. 2600:6C64:64F0:8470:85E0:2F90:F707:90A8 04:42, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- How about a compromise solution of putting the punctuation labels in small print? Something like this should work, though it was being screwy when I tested in the preview here: example Solomon (talk) 05:46, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- P.S. On my phone, it seems to only work in Desktop Mode, so maybe it's a problem with the CSS for the mobile layout? Solomon (talk) 05:48, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
... This is a thing people do? Glad to be unfamiliar. 52.213.77.206 07:27, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- I did this just yesterday; a cat was laying on my hands, and I could type "query" but not shift-questionmark. 47.145.254.54 22:45, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
This becomes an annoyingly common occurrence if you commonly use speech to text programs. It is not very fun in regular conversation 99.2.109.131 12:37, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
Instances in Media: In the Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Line", Gumball refers to "Stellar Odyssey Colon The Force Rehashed". Vandof (talk) 04:11, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- Not really relevant to this website (we're not cataloging these outside of xkcd), but have you seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters Colon The Soundtrack? 24.177.125.170 08:05, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
This is a thing my friend group can't stop saying, and i thought it was just us. neat! --Mushrooms (talk) 09:37, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
Use of that joke in the transcript section - afaik transcript is more or less an accessibility feature. Doing the spelling-out-every-punctuation thing makes the transcript significantly difficult to read, and also it confuses what is a part of the original text and what is a spelled-out punctuation you added. I'm not in favor of having the joke in the transcript section. User670 (talk) 09:49, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
The italics section is explicitly opened with the word "italics". Shouldn't it be closed? Or is that implicit in the paragraph break? I'm uncertain if the "Period. Paragraph break." should also be italicized, or if they should be exempt because they're punctuation and formatting indicators. BunsenH (talk) 16:17, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
Interesting reaction on Randall's (Cueball's) part. When people do that, it makes me want to poke them in the eye. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 17:00, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
Can anyone analyse the spacing between words in the main comic? Is there unusual spacing in Cueball's speech or the caption, compared with Hairy's sentence? 86.8.84.104 00:40, 19 September 2025 (UTC)
All this discussion about verbal punctuation, and no mention of Victor Borge? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPc0aijY2o4 185.219.141.117 02:43, 19 September 2025 (UTC)
- I added a link to one of those clips fairly early on, but it got deleted. That might have been because I tried to incorporate the weird sounds in the write-up. I put it back, minus the weird sounds. BunsenH (talk) 03:42, 19 September 2025 (UTC)
The gag with the read-alound punctuation was also used about 40 years ago in a sketch in the German Fastnacht classic "Mainz bleibt Mainz" show. (Warning: Anyone commenting about German humor will get their flipperwald gersputet.) 2A02:2455:1960:4000:151C:FD75:4E37:3F6D 08:03, 19 September 2025 (UTC)
Perhaps there should be more on the selection of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle as the example of taste for the semi-punchline. I, like Hairy, would put it among the greatest films of all time, but Cueball seems to disagree, and I suspect other jokes in the history of the internet may have referred to it with the same sentiment... - jerodast (talk) 08:26, 21 September 2025 (UTC) Add comment
