Inverted punctuation
Copy the upside down question mark ¿ and the inverted exclamation mark ¡. Learn Alt codes and how to type them on Windows, Mac, and phones.
Inverted punctuation · U+00BF / U+00A1
Inverted question mark
Inverted exclamation mark
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Spanish places an inverted question mark (¿) or exclamation mark (¡) at the beginning of a sentence and the regular mark at the end. The opening mark tells readers the sentence tone before they reach its final punctuation.
¿Dónde está la biblioteca?
¡Qué sorpresa!
¿Vienes mañana? ¡Te esperamos!
Spanish (and some other languages following similar punctuation) opens a question with ¿ (U+00BF INVERTED QUESTION MARK) and closes it with ?. An exclamation opens with ¡ (U+00A1) and closes with !. The opening mark is not a rotated screenshot of a regular ?; it is its own character. Copy from this board when a US keyboard has no key for it. HTML entities are ¿ and ¡. Windows Alt codes are 0191 and 0161 on a numeric keypad. Mac: Option+Shift+? for ¿ and Option+1 for ¡. Phones: Spanish layout or a long-press on ? and !.
The opening mark can wrap only the questioning clause, not always the whole sentence: “Si puedes, ¿vienes mañana?” is a normal pattern. Writers who learned English punctuation often omit ¿ and leave only the final ?. That is understandable in a chat and marked as an error in formal Spanish. This page does not grade your sentence. It copies the two inverted marks and shows examples. It is not an upside-down text generator that flips every letter; that is a different LiteralKit tool. Mixing the two jobs produces unreadable Spanish.
People search “Spanish question mark” and “inverted question mark” for the same glyph. The primary name on this URL is the upside down question mark because that is how many English keyboards describe ¿. In Spanish class you will hear “signo de interrogación de apertura.” Both names point at U+00BF. Do not use a backwards question mark from another Unicode block as a substitute; fonts and search will treat it as a different character. The same warning applies to using an inverted exclamation from a dingbat font.
Word on Windows: type 00BF then Alt+X for ¿, or 00A1 then Alt+X for ¡. Google Docs: Insert → Special characters. If a font draws ¿ as a box, switch fonts; the character is still in the file. Copy-paste from this page into Excel, slides, or a chat usually works because the marks are in Latin-1 and every modern font that covers Spanish includes them. They are not emoji. They do not need a color font.
Catalan, Asturian, and some bilingual signs also use the inverted marks. Galician and older Spanish-style punctuation in the Americas vary by publisher. Follow the house style in front of you. This board will not insert ¿ automatically when you type a final ?. A word processor with Spanish proofing tools might; LiteralKit will not. Keep the Latin letters as you typed them.
Related pages: degree symbol for a different punctuation-sized mark, and upside-down text if you meant to flip a whole word. See-also links sit below. If you arrived here from a flipped-text FAQ, you are on the inverted-punctuation board on purpose. Copy ¿ or ¡, then go back to writing the sentence in normal letter order.
Accessibility: screen readers speaking Spanish will usually announce a question from the inverted mark, which is why the opening mark exists. In English voices they may say “inverted question mark.” That is still better than omitting it in a document meant to be Spanish. Search engines index ¿ as a character; omitting it can still rank a page but will look wrong to readers.
When you publish a shortcut list, include keypad versus no keypad. Chromebooks and many laptops have no Alt+0191 path; copy is faster. This upside down question mark board keeps both inverted marks together because they are learned as a pair. Try a paste into the actual composition box—email, chat, or exam portal—before you type a long paragraph that depends on the glyphs surviving.
Exam portals and LMS editors sometimes strip Latin-1 punctuation they do not expect from a US keyboard. Paste a single ¿ into the essay box first. If it survives a save-and-reload, the rest of the paper is safe. If it becomes a straight ?, keep a note that the portal normalized punctuation and write the opening mark in a comment to the teacher if the rubric requires it. Email composition windows almost always keep both inverted marks because they live in the same block as accented Spanish letters. Chat apps do too, unless they run a custom font that forgot Latin-1.
Use the shortcut for your device, or copy either mark from the board above.
Spanish uses ¿ and ¡ at the start of a question or exclamation so readers can recognize the sentence tone from the beginning. The regular ? or ! closes the sentence.
¿ and ¡ are the Spanish opening forms of the question mark and exclamation mark. They are paired with ? and ! at the end: ¿Cómo estás? and ¡Qué bien!
On Windows with a numeric keypad, use Alt + 0191 for ¿ and Alt + 0161 for ¡.
On a Mac, use Option + Shift + ? for ¿ and Option + 1 for ¡. On iPhone, iPad, or Android, use a Spanish keyboard or long-press ? and ! to select the inverted marks.
Need to flip whole words or sentences (upside-down text)? Use /upside-down-text-generator. This page is only for typing or copying the inverted punctuation marks ¿ and ¡.
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