(Eds. note: The following originally appeared in the Spring 2009 print edition, our inaugural issue. To obtain a copy, please visit our store.)

The interrobang was never long for this world. Designed for greatness, within a decade of its creation the character, a portmanteau of the exclamation point and the question mark, had been shuffled off to the dusky annals of typographic obscurity. Created in 1962 by TYPEtalks editor Martin K. Speckter, it enjoyed a brief vogue, appearing in various news media and a handful of typesets and typewriters. But with the wane of the sixties, so went the interrobang. However well-meant, the mark had a fatal flaw: at smaller font sizes it became an indistinguishable blob. It was intended to express rhetorical incredulity, but to make any sense at all it had to be big and bold. As in: “My god, what what have we done!?”

So we interrobang. “What are we doing!?” A physical magazine when print sales are at historic low? Madness. But we can’t help ourselves. We’re indelibly attracted to the heft of paper, to the aura of ink. As electronic media proliferates it becomes harder to distinguish oneself – indeed to feel any thrill at all – amid the flotsam and jetsam; In apposition to these forces, the visceral nature of print becomes more pronounced. And thus, though we’ve hedged our bets in acknowledgment of our present, we insisted, perhaps to our folly, that this work have print edition as well as an online presence. This, we
think, rifling the pages of the book, is substance.

Our subtitle calls Interrobang “Providence’s Web and Print Zine for the Arts.” That too, is an audacious claim, but not the audacity of confrontation, but embrace. Interrobang belongs to the city, not the other way around – percolated, stirred up, and pushed forward groaning, kicking, screaming, until finally, gracefully, out the printers and into your hands.

In this volume are the works of photographers, poets, musicians, essayists, and prose writers from our city, New England, and all over the country. There are poems about mapmakers, an essay about horror, a story about soup, and much more to thrill and elate, to warm and to wonder. We’d like to thank each and every one of our submitters, regardless of whether your work was selected, for making our inaugural issue special and helping us realize what, nine months ago, seemed like a pipe dream.

Interrobang. When Speckter asked for suggestions for the name of his new mark, runners-up included the “exclarotive” and the “exclamaquest.” Perhaps they would have sufficed, but neither has the same vaudevillian allure of interrobang. Its sex and suggestiveness. It pops.

Interrobang. Welcome aboard. Thanks for reading. There’s more to come.

All our regards,

The Interrobang Editors