# question marks



## Sofia Linares

hello, someone can tell me if  a latin question is written with two question marks, just like the Spanish, or only the last one.

PSardon my typo​


----------



## cyberpedant

I learned classical Latin many years ago in an English-speaking environment. We did not use Spanish question marks. I can't say if the original Latin texts used _any _question marks.


----------



## Sofia Linares

if quo vadis is a question, it go with question marks?​


----------



## cyberpedant

I believe so. "Quo vadis?"


----------



## Sofia Linares

Yes, I think it is as you say, thanks.


----------



## relativamente

In modern books you can see the normal ? (just at the end)


Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?


In ancient times was not used this mark (nor any other)

I found this somewhere, more or less reads...


 early scholars .... they would place the word questio - meaning "question" - at the end of a sentence to indicate a query.. So they squashed the letters into a symbol: a lowercased q on top of an o. Over time the o shrank to a dot and the q


----------



## cyberpedant

Most interesting, relativamente. Can you give us a reference?


----------



## brian

Here. But it says that uppercase _Q_ was used.


----------



## berndf

brian8733 said:


> Here. But it says that uppercase _Q_ was used.


We are talking about late/medieval Latin here. Classical Latin had no such thing as a question mark.


----------



## brian

Are you clarifying something I wrote or just making a general statement?

I wasn't implying that Classical Latin used the question mark, especially since the Wiki says:



> The symbol is also sometimes thought to originate from the Latin _quaestiō_ (that is, qvaestio), meaning "question", which was abbreviated during the *Middle Ages *to _Qo_. The uppercase _Q_ was written above the lowercase _o_, and this mark was transformed into the modern symbol.


----------



## berndf

brian8733 said:


> Are you clarifying something I wrote...?


I felt, it wasn't 100% clear from your comment.


----------

