To conserve valuable space, writing it was soon shortened to qo, which caused another problem—readers might mistake it for the ending of a word. So, they squashed the letters into a symbol: a lowercase q on top of an o. Over time the o shrank to a dot and the q to a squiggle, giving us our current question mark.! EXCLAMATION POINTOrigin: Like the question mark, the exclamation point was invented by stacking letters. The mark comes from the Latin word io, meaning “exclamation of joy.” Written vertically, with the i above the o, it forms the exclamation point we use today.= EQUAL SIGNOrigin: Invented by English mathematician Robert Recorde in 1557, with this rationale: “I will sette as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or Gemowe [i.e., twin] lines of one length, thus: =====, bicause noe 2 thynges, can be more equalle.” His equal signs were about five times as long as the current ones, and it took more than a century for his sign to be accepted over its rival: a strange curly symbol invented by Descartes.& AMPERSANDOrigin: This symbol is a stylized et, Latin for “and.”
