Tip: Alternative to the “Question Mark” for File Names on Windows

Some time ago I decided I needed a question mark character for use in file names.

Searching for tutorials, I found some that suggested changing fonts
to make another character appear like the question mark. I found this to
be too much trouble, as it would have to be replicated in multiple
computers to work on a networked environment for it to be seen
correctly. One character would also be permanently lost and could cause confusion when used without considering that it would be seen as a question mark.

While reading the Wikipedia “question mark” article, I found that
Unicode has support for question marks from some less popular languages. Among the ones that I saw, the Ethiopic was the most pleasing to my eyes: ፧ (looks like vertical ellipses).

As Windows has native Unicode support, I tried that mark on my files
and confirmed it displays correctly and that programs with Unicode
support don’t complain about it.

To make it easier to use and not have to copy-paste it or type
{ALT+”HEXCODE”}, I included an auto-substitution definition on one of my AutoHotkey scripts that is already always running. That makes possible to write “mqm” and get a ፧ instead. “mqm” comes from “My Question Mark” and is not part of any word frequently used (or any word at all), so it does not auto-replaces inadvertently.

This works for me, on my systems. I don’t remember sending files with
፧ on them to someone, so I don’t know how people react to it on first
encounter, but I guess it should be pretty obvious to understand the
intent of it in a file name like “Are Creative Commons Licenses Even
Enforceable፧” or “Are your backup systems secure፧”.

If you too have been bothered by the impossibility of using a
question mark to name files on Windows, you are welcome to try this
solution. You can choose your own question mark from the ones available on the Unicode code page if you don’t like the one I choose.

What do you think about this solution፧ If you have a better alternative, please share it on the comments section.


Originally posted on my blog (link).

The full-width question mark (?) works quite well, at least in the Windows 10 fonts:

Yep, albeit I would have a hard time getting used to all the "space" around it. Not really a problem, but made me opt for ፧.

On Opus, where I see ፧ the most, it has no "space" around it. I use the Consolas font on my command line terminal and I am quite displeased to see a bit of "space" after ፧. On the terminal, the full-width question mark has it both before and after.