Wordwatch: Question Mark

I began to notice an odd phenomenon about ten years ago: the simple word “question” had mysteriously come to be replaced in many spoken and written contexts by the phrase “question mark”.

Here are one or two examples: “At a time when companies are making people redundant, there is a major question mark over the morality of increasing the pressure on businesses and families…” letter, Daily Telegraph, July 2009. And, the other day, in an interview on LBC radio: “There’s a big question mark over the sudden dismissal of several hundred employees by P&O Ferries …”.

There’s not much difficulty in understanding what’s meant in these examples, though the introduction of the reference to a form of punctuation can create confusion, as in this case: “Detective stories contain a far greater number of question marks than most other novels” — London Review of Books, November 2020. Does the writer intend to refer to the way the stories are punctuated, or is he highlighting more general doubts?

I’m fascinated by this development, which seems to have arisen from a perhaps understandable wish on the part of writers to replace an abstract (though surely not colourless) word with something more concrete. The slipping of the idiom from written prose to everyday speech is odd, though: was it copied by speakers from what they had seen written? The process usually goes the other way. 

It occurs to me to wonder if it’s the only example of that process. Have other punctuation marks ever undergone this transformation into noun-phrase? I can’t think of any, though we sometimes enact them as we speak — flicking index and middle finger in both hands, held up to “portray” inverted commas, for instance. And inverted commas occasionally make an appearance, enlarged, in designed announcements where they act simply as attention-grabbing display. 

Only the exclamation mark, I think, has a full alternative life, not in our idiomatic language but as a visual image, most familiarly as a symbol for danger. It was one of the signs introduced for use on the roads after the report of the committee that investigated this subject under the chairmanship of Sir Walter Warboys in 1963. Among its innovations, the Warboys Committee imported into Britain several symbols that had been in common use as road signs in mainland Europe. They played their part in the assimilation of Great Britain into the aspiring new “Common Market” or “European Economic Community”.

The exclamation mark, which had been a common sight in Belgium, has since become well and truly established here as a warning sign. It’s enclosed in a red triangle, which had been the standard “hazard” symbol before these changes. But although we may occasionally say, out loud, “exclamation mark” to emphasise what we’re saying, I’m afraid the phrase has never succeeded in becoming an idiom in its own right, either spoken or written.

“Question mark” remains unique. But I think it’s only a passing fashion, a verbal tic, and will probably disappear from our lives in due course.