Pearl and the Beard – Will Smith Medley from Goddamn Cobras Collective on Vimeo.

Whenever our Latin writing friends wanted to indicate a question or query, they would add quaesti? to the end of the sentence.

Lacking a sense of elegance, and not to mention taking up quite a bit of space, quaesti? was abbreviated to QO. This worked wonders for the scribes as their jobs became a little easier and they could produce texts quicker and have more space to work with.

But for some, QO seemed like a word with missing letters. To counter this, the O would be placed beneath the Q, rather than next to it — a clever little move that turned QO from an abbreviated word, to a glyph unto its self.

Being that this was now a sort of symbol that was always drawn by hand, the evolution of it to the question mark we know today is fairly evident (and pretty damn cool).

Cobra Den Invitational: Wakey!Wakey! – Ambling Alp (Yeasayer) from Goddamn Cobras Collective on Vimeo.