The inverted question mark, , and inverted exclamation mark, , are punctuation marks used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences or clauses in Spanish and some languages which have cultural ties with Spain, such as Asturian and Waray languages. The initial marks are mirrored at the end of the sentence or clause by the 'ordinary' question mark, , or exclamation mark, . Inverted marks are supported by various standards, including ISO-8859-1, Unicode, and HTML. They can be entered directly on keyboards designed for Spanish-speaking countries. Usage The inverted question mark is written before the first letter of an interrogative sentence or clause to indicate that a question follows. It is a rotated form of the standard symbol "?" recognized by speakers of other languages written with the Latin script. A normal question mark is written at the end of the sentence or clause. Inverted punctuation is especially critical in Spanish since the syntax of the language means that both statements and questions or exclamations could have the same wording. "Do you like summer?" and "You like summer." are translated respectively as and (There is not always a difference between the wording of a yes–no question and the corresponding statement in Spanish.) In sentences that are both declarative and interrogative, the clause that asks a question is isolated with the starting-symbol inverted question mark, for example: ("If you cannot go with them, would you like to go with us?"), not This helps to recognize questions and exclamations in long sentences. Unlike the ending marks, which are printed along the baseline of the text, the inverted marks (¿ and ¡) descend below the line. History In 1668, John Wilkins proposed using the inverted exclamation mark "¡" as a symbol at the end of a sentence to denote irony. He was one of many, including Desiderius Erasmus, who felt there was a need for such a punctuation mark, but Wilkins' proposal, as was true of the other attempts, failed to take hold. Inverted marks were originally recommended by the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), published in the second edition of the (Orthography of the Castilian language) in 1754 recommending it as the symbol indicating the beginning of a question in written Spanish—e.g. ("How old are you?"). The Real Academia also ordered the same inverted-symbol system for statements of exclamation, using the symbols "¡" and "!". These new rules were slowly adopted; there