Please use apostrophes ( ' ) instead of accents ( ` and ´ ). This seems to
be especially a habit of germans and unix-affected people, the first for no
real reason the latter because *nix uses them in some nice way so they
get confused in real life 😀 (some bashing on windows users needed here).

Or better, switch to Spanish where we don't need these. 😁

You have those fucked up question marks, not? 😀

I was one of those Germans that couldn't go without the ´`... I think the reason was that the ´ is accessible on German keyboards without having to press shift+# (I *think* on US keyboards ' is at the same place but without the shift - so *much* easier accessible). Only when I began to write the Exult documentation which is generated from xml/xsl did I switch, since the html/text converter chocked on the accents 😀
Now I'm not using the accents at all, but sometimes I'm having problems with upper cases because my finger lingers too long on the shift key 😀

wd wrote:

You have those fucked up question marks, not? 😀

You got me there, sir. 😁

Yes we have both (for exclamation and interrogative sentences)

¡ exclamation !

¿ Interrogative ?

how are they used in Spanish ?

When using exclamations or interrogation in sentences, you have to put two different (inversed) marks to mark the beginning and the end of the sentece. It should be something like.

¿Te gusta DOSBox? -> Do you like DOSBox?

¡Me gusta DOSBox! -> I like DOSBox!

In English only closing marks are used. Some people are beginning to stop using the opening mark as if the were writing in English. Fucking SMSs.

Any idea how old that ¿¡ usage is? From before the printing press?

I don't know. It's probably quite old.

Wikipedia knows everything 😉

Wikipedia wrote:

In some languages, such as Spanish, Galician and Leonese typography since the 18th century has required opening and closing question marks

So, not that old.

Wikipedia rules for sure. 😎