The SMS contributed to generate a degradation of the use of language and especially of spelling with the excuse that nothing fits me in the 140 characters! The communication devices that we carry in our pocket, in addition to the generalization of the use of social networks, where again, for example, appears on Twitter, the limitation of size does not seem to favor us writing better. So we continue to mistreat spelling and especially to lose characters in the messages we send.
In a tweet from @wicho I saw a link to the Royal Spanish Academy in which you can read how question marks and exclamation marks are used in Spanish. And this is what it says:
The question marks (¿?) And exclamation marks (¡!) Serve to represent in the writing, respectively, the interrogative or exclamatory intonation of a statement. They are double signs, because there is an opening sign and a closing sign, which must be placed at the beginning and at the end of the corresponding statement; however, there are cases in which only the closing signs are used.
What are those uses in which only the closing sign is used?
The SAR explains that the two uses are:
- The closing signs written in parentheses they are used to express doubt (those of interrogation) or surprise (those of exclamation), not exempt, in most cases, of irony. For example: it would be funny (?) That he had lost his keys, he finished his studies at thirty years old and is so proud (!).
- The use of question marks in the indication of doubtful dates, especially in encyclopedic works. It is recommended to place both signs, the opening and closing: Hernández, Gregorio (1576? -1636), although it is also possible to write only the closing: Hernández, Gregorio (1576? -1636).
So now I will have to be more attentive to how the exclamation or question mark is written on the mobile phone, especially when, and due to its Anglo-Saxon origin, the opening sign is not drawn on the keyboard. In case it helps, we have discovered at home that by clicking on the exclamation or question mark on the mobile device, a set of characters appears, including the opening sign! So, except ignorance, we should no longer have an excuse.
