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A reversed question mark, proposed for a rhetorical question.
Also known as: Irony mark, Rhetorical question mark, Backwards question mark
A question mark mirrored left to right, introduced by an English printer in the 1580s to mark a question that expects no answer. It lasted about fifty years and every subsequent attempt at an irony mark has failed the same way.
A question mark reversed left to right, marking a rhetorical question — one asked without expecting an answer.
Introduced by the English printer Henry Denham in the 1580s and out of use within about fifty years. Several later marks for irony have been proposed on the same reasoning and none has been adopted either.
England · 1580s to c. 1630
The repeated failure is itself informative: readers appear to prefer inferring tone from context to being told, and a mark that announces irony arguably removes it.
A question mark drawn in mirror image, its hook curling to the left over a single dot on the baseline.