Interurban

The interurban (or radial railway) is a type of electric railway, with streetcar-like light electric self-propelled railcars which run within and between cities or towns. They were prevalent in North America between 1900 and 1925 and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. Limited examples existed in Europe and Asia. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, and the cars that ran on the rails.

The interurban, especially in the United States, was a valuable cultural institution. Most roads and town streets were unpaved, and transportation was by horse-drawn carriages and carts. The interurban provided vital transportation links between the city and countryside. In 1915, 15,500 miles (24,900 km) of interurban railways were operating in the United States. For a time, interurban railways were the fifth-largest industry in the United States.

By 1930, most interurbans were gone with few surviving into the 1950s. Oliver Jensen, author of American Heritage History of Railroads in America, commented that "...the automobile doomed the interurban whose private tax paying tracks could never compete with the highways that a generous government provided for the motorist."

Interrobang

The interrobang (/ɪnˈtɛrəˌbæŋ/), also known as the interabang, ‽ (often represented by ?! or !?), is a nonstandard punctuation mark used in various written languages and intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the "interrogative point") and the exclamation mark or exclamation point (known in printers' and programmers' jargon as the "bang"). The glyph is a superimposition of these two marks. The word itself is an example of a portmanteau that incorporates an onomatopoeia.

Application

A sentence ending with an interrobang asks a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question.

For example:

In informal English, the same inflection is usually notated by ending a sentence with first a question mark and then an exclamation mark, or vice versa. Many people are unfamiliar with the interrobang, and would be puzzled when first seeing it, although its intention is usually self-evident. The interrobang can be hand-written with a single stroke plus the dot. One common application is in cartoons, as a stand-alone symbol of surprise.