What's your first thought?
- ugh/ewww
- hmm...
- whatever.
- yay!
As much as I experienced type around me, and as I could investigate, virtually all typefaces feature question marks pointing down, i.e. towards their dots. This approach makes perfect sense as it resonates with the exclamation mark and is easy to carry over to darker weights.
I also suppose a lot of people write their "?" like that? What about you? I can't recall being taught how to write it at school, nor seeing it in a primer. It just appeared unexpectedly, or rather unnoticeably, as something as simple as a squiggly line with a dot, and whatever, who cares as long as it can be read. But somehow I write my "?" as a reversed "S" shape unless I'm being particularly typographic/calligraphic. I also sense this is the prevalent form in Poland.
Edit: I think it was in a primer after all. And S-shaped... So this makes it an infant form?
Comments
I always enjoyed the question mark over the bat signal in "Batman and Robin". Jim Carrey as the Riddler was supreme and the most memorable charcter in my childish mind back then.
Historically, the question mark is thought to have derived from the letter Q, so I always keep that in mind when designing it, similar to how I keep the N in mind when designing a tilde or a z when designing a cedilla.
(More often than not, I start with the ogonek and use it for the cedilla, balancing them out )
I associate it primarily with Renner who was certainly German, but I don't know if he can yet be considered antiquated. Futura is still a fairly commonly used font.
I used the furled form in my Scotch Modern (left), copying the original mid 19th century design, of which my type is a facsimile-style revival.
Its tiny aperture is consistent with that feature of the “mid century modern”.
In comparison, the unfurled curves of Garamond (right).
BTW, this is the first S shaped question mark my brain recalls . . .