杏吧原创

Earmarked

What are the origins of the question mark? It鈥檚 shaped like an ear. Is there a connection?

鈥� The Last Word may have strayed out of its depth in investigating the question mark, for we discover there are two views of its origin. The first is given in many books of general knowledge, but the second 鈥渞ising pitch鈥� theory appears more attractive. And to support it, we found pictures of two question marks from 9th and 12th-century manuscripts at . Further expert opinion is welcome 鈥� Ed

鈥� During the Middle Ages, the amanuensis would denote a question by writing a little 鈥渜鈥�, the first letter of questio, Latin for 鈥渜uestion鈥�. That q, down the centuries, gradually became a 鈥�?鈥�.

Alan Viezzoli

Trieste, Italy

鈥� Alas, the shape of the question mark has nothing to do with that of the ear. Its origins go back to the early Middle Ages, to the time of Charlemagne in the 800s. A question mark is made up of two distinct marks: the point and the curvy bit. The point indicates the end of a sentence, and shows up in all our current punctuation marks that do the same job (. ? !). This point meant more or less the same thing in the early Middle Ages as it does today. The curvy bit, however, was originally written on its side, so the medieval question mark looked rather like .藴 instead of our current ?. Actually, the 藴 was usually tilted slightly upwards to the right, but this is as close as I can easily get to it in modern type.

This 藴 represented the intonation pattern of a question, in which the pitch is raised at the end, and is loosely associated with early systems for writing pitch in music. So the question mark is ultimately derived from the perceived musicality of medieval Latin questions, their melody if you will. This .藴 form was then used throughout the Middle Ages, with some minor, and a few major, variations due to individual scribal practices and the traditions within scriptoria.

The familiar upright form of the question mark seems to show up first in early printing in the late 1400s, and subsequently became the standard over the course of the 1500s. It was used, for example, by that most celebrated early printer, Aldus Manutius. The typefaces of these pioneer printers were based on humanist scripts of the 1300s (from which we get all our roman and italic fonts), in which the medieval question mark had taken on a more stylistic form.

The rotated question mark 驴 used in Spanish has its origins in the mid-1700s. It was felt that a single mark at the end of the sentence wasn鈥檛 enough to allow Spanish readers to regularly achieve the right intonation pattern, and after officially recognising the problem in 1739, the Real Academia Espa帽ola in 1754 advocated the use of 驴 at the beginning of interrogative clauses in conjunction with ? at the ends. Even then it took a couple of decades before it came into regular and consistent use.

My favourite variant of the question mark is, however, no longer in use, having died out not long after it first appeared in the 1580s. It is the rhetorical question mark, used at the end of questions for which no answer is expected. It was formed as a ? flipped about the vertical axis, so that rather than opening toward the sentence, it opened away from it. Unfortunately, this intriguing mark of punctuation fell out of use in the 1600s, leaving us with the standard ? to mark the ends of rhetorical questions (and me unable to easily demonstrate it using standard character sets).

Eric P. Carlson

London, UK

Thanks to the wonders of modern printing, we can proudly recreate for you the rhetorical question mark 驴 鈥� Ed

Vodka on the rocks

When I placed a bottle of vodka in the freezer compartment of my refrigerator, I noticed that after a few hours it contained what appeared to be rhombic ice crystals about 8 millimetres long each side. Strangely, they were all floating vertically. Why?

鈥� The Last Word鈥檚 ever-open laboratory set out to confirm the existence of these frozen vodka crystals. Vodka samples of different alcoholic strengths were placed in clear plastic bags in the fast-freeze compartment of standard household freezer. Vodka at 40 per cent alcohol by volume appeared to freeze in an amorphous lump. However, vodka containing 50 per cent alcohol produced, after about 1 hour in the freezer, a series of elongated, almost matchstick-like, clear ice crystals floating vertically near the surface of the spirit. The answer below describes well what we saw. To avoid unnecessary waste, the vodka was consumed afterwards. 鈥� Ed

鈥� Alcohol is a better solvent of gases such as carbon dioxide than water is, and so vodka contains more dissolved gases than plain water. When the crystals nucleate, they force that dissolved gas out of solution, and a bubble remains trapped in the crystal. Although ice is less dense than water, it is a little denser than a solution of alcohol at that concentration and temperature. However, the trapped bubbles give the crystals enough buoyancy to stay afloat in the fluid regions richer in water.

The crystals do not grow symmetrically. In particular, the bubbles interfere with the packing of molecules in the ice, so the nucleus of each crystal lies towards one end. This keeps them floating vertically, with the bubble near the top and the clear ice at the bottom. To confirm this, break a few crystals in half and you should see the lower ends sink lower, while the tops float higher, perhaps on the surface.

Jon Richfield

Somerset West, South Africa

This week鈥檚 question

Light bite

Aero, a famous brand of chocolate bar, contains bubbles in a chocolate matrix. The bubbles are evenly sized and distributed throughout the whole bar. How do the manufacturers produce this effect? Why don鈥檛 the bubbles rise to the surface of the bar as the molten chocolate solidifies?

Natasha Thomas

Watford, Hertfordshire, UK