What's this? Give the ¿ a name. Win dinner.

¿

What's that thing called? If anything, so far, it's an "upside down question mark", usually found at the beginning of questions in Spanish text. But Emdashes, the New Yorker-loving website, has launched a competition to give it an English name more apt and elegant. It would be nice if a Canadian magophile won the prize, which is dinner for two at the Spanish, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Dominican, &c., restaurant of your choice, or, if you prefer, a beautiful copy of Pablo Neruda's immortal The Book of Questions. The deadline is August 25 and you can enter by e-mail.

Regular readers of this blog will recall that two years ago there was some discussion about the interrobang, a combination of the question and exclamation mark and a close cousin of the thingummy above.

That's us, always on the leading edges of type and usage...