A question mark is a punctuation mark or, more pedantically, a tone mark. It is a full stop, like a period used in interrogatory sentences, such as "Where did you get that hat?" In US English it is also called a query.

The symbol is generally thought to originate from the Latin quæstio, meaning question, which was abbreviated to 'Qo', which was transformed into the symbol.

In some languages, most notably Spanish, a sentence (or sometimes a phrase) ending in an question mark must also begin with an inverted question mark, ¿. See also: exclamation mark, full stop


In computer programming, the question mark corresponds to Unicode and ASCII character 63, or 0x003F.
For the rock music band, see ? & the Mysterians.