Text Formatting ⇒ Creating symbol

[svend_tveskaeg]

Hi all.

I watched an episode of QI the other day and the character interrobang was mentioned. Natually, this had to be examined closer so I had a look at the Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List and there it was, in Table 40. This is all good and well but how is this symbol designed in LaTeX?

Can it be made independent of the font so that the exclamation mark is vertically horizontically centered relative to the question mark? (I have not tried anything myself since I have no idea where to begin.)

Thank you in advance!

[kaiserkarl13]

It says in the table that the symbol is "faked" only if there are two present; since there aren't I would assume \textinterrobang is part of a font. You could try to make your own using something like !$\!$? or !$\mkern{-0.01em}$?, but the right widths would depend on the particular typeface you've chosen and are not universal.

If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards---checkmate!

[svend_tveskaeg]

I had \mkern in mind myself but I find it rather inelegant*). Is this really the way to go?

Is it not possible to measume half the width of a question mark and then tell LaTeX to insert a exclamation point there? That would be universal.

*) I cannot explain why so I know that is it a lousy argument...

[cgnieder]

One wouldn't need \mkern, there's also the text mode equivalent \kern. Another possibility for superimposiung two characters could be \ooalign. However, to get it right in this case is a tedious task and in any case font dependent (*) so I would go with the real font character if possible:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{textcomp}

\newcommand*\fakeinterrobang{?\kern-.845ex!}
\newcommand*\Fakeinterrobang{{\ooalign{?\cr\kern.2ex!\cr}}}

\begin{document}

\textinterrobang \fakeinterrobang \Fakeinterrobang

\Large \textinterrobang \fakeinterrobang \Fakeinterrobang

\huge \textinterrobang \fakeinterrobang \Fakeinterrobang

\normalsize\ttfamily
\textinterrobang \fakeinterrobang \Fakeinterrobang

\end{document}

Regards

(*) There is no fixed width for a interrogation mark or an exclamation mark and it isn't even a fixed fact that the dot below is in the middle of the width...

[svend_tveskaeg]

@Clemens:
Spot on. Thank you.