The question and exclamation marks in the Spanish language: Why are they used at the beginning and end of a sentence?

Why are question and exclamation marks used at the beginning and end of a sentence in the Spanish language?"

Before we delve into the topic, let's take a brief look at the history and review the punctuation marks used in written language.In ancient Greece and Rome, around the 3rd century BC, the art of eloquence and speaking well, known as oratory, was highly valued.Written texts were meant to be read aloud. The scriptio continua, which means writing texts without punctuation marks, required the speaker to be familiar with the text beforehand in order to understand its content and emphasize the most important parts. Punctuation marks were therefore essential for indicating pauses, questions, exclamations, and other elements. However, clear punctuation rules did not exist until the 3rd century BC. It was at this time that a man named Aristophanes of Byzantium entered the scene to bring some order to the writing system. He proposed a system that used many punctuation marks and symbols that are still in use today. Since texts were read aloud, Byzantium devised a system to ensure proper vocalization of the texts.

After Byzantium, Christians arrived in Spain during the early centuries of the Common Era and used texts and their oral reading to transmit the word of God. Some of Aristophanes' symbols fell into disuse, and new symbols were incorporated, but there was no clear rule or writing system. This continued until the 7th century when Isidore of Seville updated Aristophanes' system. Isidore adopted some symbols, such as a low dot for a brief pause, a middle dot for a medium pause, and a high dot for a long pause. Isidore's low dot is now our comma, and the high dot is our period.

As we know, there are other Romance languages that do not use opening punctuation marks. Additionally, languages like English, French, and German only use the punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. So why does the Spanish language use both symbols? The answer is that the Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española or RAE), a cultural institution dedicated to linguistic standardization among Spanish speakers, established it that way. The RAE was founded in 1713.

The function of the question mark is to indicate that a question is being asked, and therefore, it needs to be intoned. Accordingly, the question mark is placed exactly at the beginning of the question. 

In 1753, the academicians debated this symbol, which was used only at the end of a sentence for short phrases and at the beginning and end for longer sentences. They concluded that this way of punctuating was too arbitrary, as everyone did it differently. Therefore, they reached the conclusion that the final question mark was not enough, and in 1870, they decided to standardize its usage according to the current criteria.

It was in the second edition of the "Orthography of the Royal Spanish Academy" published in 1754 when the question mark began to be used both at the beginning and at the end, leaving its mark forever.

As for the exclamation mark, it was initially referred to as the mark of admiration. However, it was later decided to call it the exclamation mark. This symbol indicates when the voice should be raised or a sentence should be emphasized due to surprise, astonishment, joy, an order, or other reasons. Similar to question marks, it was decided that the exclamation mark should be placed at the beginning and at the end of a sentence.