Ideas start in interesting places.  A friend was telling me about her tattoos.  She said one of them was her favorite punctuation mark.  I thought it a bit odd that someone would love a punctuation mark so much to have it permanently inked on their body.  Turns out, it was an interrobang.

Interrobangs are punctuation marks that combine the interrogative (?) and excitement (!).  In mathematical terms, ? + ! = ‽

I was pretty excited to learn about this, as I frequently end sentences with "?!?" to show an excited question, amazement, or disbelief.  For example: You have a tattoo of what?!?.  I began looking for a way to be able to type an interrobang on my iPhone.  Not finding anything particularly helpful, I came up with this solution using iOS's Shortcuts feature.

Shortcuts let you define key combinations that trigger a word or phrase.  The example Apple pre-loads is typing "omw" expands into "on my way."  Not sure why you'd want to make your messages longer, but we can use this to our advantage.  Another way to think of it is autocorrect that actually works, becasue you define the rules.

First you need to copy a "interrobang" on your iPhone.  You can copy it from this post or do a search for interrobang.  Either way, find one, select, and copy it.

From the Home Screen select Settings, General, Keyboard.  Shortcuts are at the bottom of the page.  Select Add New Shortcut.  Paste the interrobang into the Phrase box.  Type "?!" (or whatever you want to trigger the ‽) into the Shortcut box.  Press Save and you're ready to go.

Anytime you type "?!" (or whatever you used as your Shortcut) it will trigger an interrobang.