BASIC's question mark and PRINT

[Jim Battle]

tim lindner wrote:
> In BASIC, where did the short cut of '?' for PRINT originate?
> 
> After following a discussion on the CoCo list I thought I'd ask here.
> 

Here are some bounds and data points.

The Dartmouth BASIC specification does not have ? as an abbrevation (circa 1964).

I think all versions of Microsoft BASIC have this shortcut (circa 1975).

Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- instead it 
used "P.".

Wang BASIC (circa 1972) didn't use this convention.

 From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation.