The quest of A question
Nobody really knows where the punctuation marks came from. Academics have a few theories, but the historical evidence used to justify these theories is sketchy. It’s not possible to be certain who invented the punctuation marks or what was in the mind of the people who first started using them, because we lack historical documents that record these facts. Given this lack of a definitive origin of the punctuation marks, the best efforts to understand their meanings must be understood as interpretive.
Fortunately, the meanings of the punctuation marks fit into a fairly coherent system of visual symbolism. Each one of these marks can be seen as a visual metaphor of the kind of communication it is designed to accompany.
A period is what it is. It’s a single point. It stands alone. It doesn’t change.
A period is dot. It’s a datum. It represents a fact. That fact is static. It’s solid. It’s simple. Take it or leave it.
A comma is like a period, with a condition hanging off the side.
A comma begins with a statement of fact, but allows for there to be a little something more to say. A comma acknowledges that any piece of data can be contexualized, with its meaning shifted in the process.
An exclamation mark is like a period that leads to exciting implications! An exclamation knows where it is going and is emphatic about getting there!
The simple fact that leads to an exclamation mark contains such potential that at the end of its revelation, it erupts upward in a line streaking explosively toward the sky! It’s a mistake to use an exclamation mark too much, though. Not every sentence should be explosive.
What is the visual metaphor of a question mark?
A question is a quest.
A person who asks a question is simultaneously acknowledging their ignorance and expressing the intention of overcoming that ignorance. Questioners doesn’t know where they are going, but they do have a good idea of the kind of journey that they are undertaking.
A question begins with a dot, a piece of data, but that’s just the point of departure. From that initial solid fact, the path of the question stretches out with the unpredictability of an undulating snake. It deviates from the straight line into obliquity, veering first this way, then that. Eventually, it turns back into itself, as if in the discovery that its initial direction was misguided. In the end, no one can tell where the wandering path of a question may lead.
Questions serve as the beginning of stories of discovery. They indicate a speaker who understands that there is more to the world than what is immediately apparent. To ask a question is to become vulnerable to unexpected transformations of many kinds.
Many of those who depart on the quest of a question will be unable ever to return to the place where their journey began.