Exclamation Question, question (interrobang ?!)

I've seen them a lot in dialogues. Like when you want to show one characters surprise?

I strongly, strongly, strongly, very strongly prefer not to see this. Even in comics. To me, ending a sentence with ?! just looks sloppy. I would caution against over-using exclamation points at all, really. They are easily over-used and often annoying.

I'm with Derek. Shoved together, the two punctuation marks are comical. Biff!? Pow!? Holy crap, is that you, Batman?!

You have another vote for being against it. Question mark is fine. You can say something like.

"Did you even think to cancel the meeting?" he cried.

ETA: A sense of tension should already have been established in the narrative before the question that begs an exclamation. So really, there is no necessity for an exclamation point at all when the tension was previously established... typically. Does that make any sense?

I'm with misha_mcg, Chase and DanielaTorre. I tend to find them a bit distracting in prose--kinda like when someone writes in all capital letters--and I often wonder why the author is yelling at me. (dpaterso has a great point, though. Comics use double marks all the time, and I think it's possible pull them off in prose if they fit into that quirky, comic-ish style.)

Don't.

Just . . . don't.

Please.

Yup, I'm with the others - don't.

Rewrite the sentence.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Drachma10 said:

Can you have a question mark and an exclamation point in the same sentence?!

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I found that exclamation marks can almost always be left out. The shock or surprise that prompts the mark should be embedded in the words so that a punctuation isn't needed.

I tend to save them for the rare cases where they give the exact shade of meaning I'm looking for. So I've never actually had the occasion to combine them.

I find I use them mostly in dialogue, too.

Chase said:

I'm with Derek. Shoved together, the two punctuation marks are comical. Biff!? Pow!? Holy crap, is that you, Batman?!

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Which could be written in dead-serious literary works: "Holy crap! Is that you, Batman?" avoiding the interrobang altogether.

I'm not dead against it, but use it even less than adverbs.

I used them, but my story is very rooted in the Star Wars aesthetic, so it's not quite a literary style.

Time for the return of the Interrobang

I do agree with the majority here -- poorly equipped that I am to deal with grammar.
I do see this kind of thing as a result of some of our "rules" (that aren't really rules), such as use said as opposed to giggled or cried, or yelled, or exclaimed.

"Did you even think to cancel the meeting?" he cried.
I think this is fine, in the right place at the right time. Grammatically, there's nothing wrong with it at all. Style is the potential problem and only the writer can determine that .

"Did you even think to cancel the meeting?" he said in a low, cold voice.
I suppose this is a bit bad too, because it should be part of the context rather than part of the dialog tag.

He crumpled the paper and slammed his fist on the table. ""Did you even think to cancel the meeting?" He shot up our of the chair and stomped to the window, hands tightly gripped together behind his back.

Part of the problem is the obvious. We can't really hear him say this thing so we can't hear the volume or the tone. The question is, how to accurately show this in the writing. I suppose a !? is one way, but I can't imagine that being correct from a grammar standpoint.

amrose said:

I'm not dead against it, but use it even less than adverbs.

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I'm with amrose. The interrobang has a lot of lethal enemies. I'm not one of them, but I don't use it often either.

One or the other. Don't be greedy.