word choice - What are the names of the pieces of a question mark?


A question mark ? seems to be composed of two distinct pieces, top and bottom. Do these pieces have their own names, and if so, what are they?



Answer



If you're willing to go entirely by hearsay, a question mark has a curl, a lobe and a ball.


To quote:



Just as Kinky Friedman anthropomorphizes this B, giving it human characteristics, namely ribs, type designers have come up with some very human terms to describe the details of the letterforms that they create. They speak the arm (of, say, an E), the crotch (of an M), which could further be described as an acute crotch or an obtuse crotch, the ear (of some g’s), which might be a flat ear or a floppy ear, the eye (of an e), the leg (of a k), the shoulder (of an n), the tail (of a j or a Q), and the spine (of an S). There is a sketch by the great type designer Ed Benguiat that labels the curl, the lobe and the ball of a single question mark.



It's hearsay because I couldn't find a picture of Ed Benguiat's sketch, but if the linked blog is quoting reliably, then I would say this is a fair answer since Ed Benguiat is unquestionably an important expert in typeface design.


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