Explain the Inverted question mark and exclamation point (¿ and ¡).
I'm pretty new to learning Spanish.
So i was wondering about the Inverted question mark and exclamation point (¿ and ¡)
Why is it used? When is it used? Does it give the sentence a different meaning ??
Like is it used when being sarcastic or used in a rhetorical manner ??
Thanks for your time.
5 Answers
Hi, the offspring!
Why is it used?
It's used to indicate the start of a question or exclamation, because the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language imposed that questions and exclamations should be indicated with the signs ¿?, and ¡!, respectively, in the century XVIII. This rule was imposed in order to facilitate the understanding of the texts.
When is it used?
Always.
¿? In every question.
¡! In every exclamatory sentence
Does it give the sentence a different meaning ??
Not at all.
Like is it used when being sarcastic or used in a rhetorical manner ??
No, it's used in the 100% of the cases, although laziness usually leads to writers to misuse or ignore punctuation rules.
im also new in learning spanish and that is the first thing that i ask, they told me that we put it in the beginning of the sentence so that we already know what kind of sentence it is. When your reading a long sentence you can already tell whether your dealing with a question or something else.
Hey I never knew that , and it makes sense also , I often think " what is this idiot on about?" When if I knew it was a question it would be more evident where he was coming from . 
The question should be, why isn't it used in English. Listen to any child learning to read. They work the sentence out slowly, get to the end and suddenly they have to change their inflection. It makes the sentence sound strange. I even remember this being frustrating as a child.
