Irony punctuation
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Though in the English language there is no standard accepted method to denote Irony or Sarcasm in written conversation, several forms of Punctuation have been proposed. Among the oldest and frequently attested are the percontation point,-also known as an ironicon- invented by Henry Denham in the 1580s, and the irony mark, furthered by Alcanter de Brahm in the 19th century. Both of these marks were represented visually by a backwards Question mark (Unicode U+2E2E; ⸮ ).
These various punctuation marks are primarily used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level. A bracketed Exclamation point and/or question mark as well as Scare quotes are also sometimes used to express irony or sarcasm.
In certain Ethiopic languages, sarcasm and unreal phrases are indicated at the end of a sentence with a sarcasm mark called temherte slaqî, a character that looks like an Inverted exclamation point (U+00A1; ¡ ).
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Percontation point
The percontation point ( ⸮ ) (punctus percontativus), or rhetorical question mark, also known as an ironicon was invented by Henry Denham in the 1580s and was used at the end of a Rhetorical question; however, its use died out in the 1600s. It was the reverse of an ordinary question mark, so that instead of the main opening pointing back into the sentence, it opened away from it.[1] This character can be represented using the reversed question mark (⸮) found in Unicode as U+2E2E. The percontation point is analogous to the "Irony Mark"—used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level (e.g. irony, sarcasm, etc.)—but these are rarely seen.[2]Rhetorical questions in some (informal) situations can use a bracketed question mark, e.g. "Oh, really(?)", for example in 888 subtitles. (The equivalent for an ironic or sarcastic statement would be a bracketed exclamation mark, e.g. "Oh, really(!)".)
The question mark can also be used as a "Meta" sign to signal uncertainty regarding what precedes. It is usually put between parenthesis (?). The uncertainty may concern either a superficial (such as unsure spelling) or a deeper truth, (real meaning) level.
Irony mark
The irony mark or irony point ( ⸮ ) (French: point d’ironie;) is a punctuation mark proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm (alias Marcel Bernhardt) at the end of the 19th century used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level (e.g. irony, sarcasm, etc.). It is illustrated by a small, elevated, backward-facing question mark.[3][2]It was in turn taken by Hervé Bazin in his book Plumons l’Oiseau ("Pluck the bird", 1966), in which the author proposes several other innovative punctuation marks, such as the doubt point (
), certitude point (
), acclamation point (
), authority point (
), indignation point (
), and love point (
).
Its form is essentially the same as the late Medieval 
, a percontation point (punctus percontativus), which was used to mark rhetorical questions.[2] The character can be represented using the reversed question mark found in Unicode as (⸮) U+2E2E.
The irony mark has never been used widely. It appears occasionally in obscure artistic or literary publications.
Scare quotes
Scare quotes is a term for a particular use of quotation marks. In this application, quotation marks are placed around a single word or phrase to indicate that the word or phrase does not signify its literal or conventional meaning. In contrast to the nominal typographic purpose of quotation marks, the enclosed word(s) are not necessarily quoted from another source.
Temherte slaqî
In certain Ethiopic languages, sarcasm and unreal phrases are indicated at the end of a sentence with a sarcasm mark called temherte slaqî or temherte slaq (U+00A1) ( ¡ ), a character that looks like the inverted exclamation point.[4]Snark mark
The snark mark was invented by Choz Cunningham, developing directly out of the previous irony mark invented by Alcanter de Brahm; however, it was not intended to be pigeonholed into only denoting sarcasm.[3] The snark mark is sometimes represented as a Tilde (~) over a period, and/or ".~". This glyph and digraph have the advantages of having no other meaning, and not getting confused with sentence-leading inverted punctuation in Spanish bilingual texts.[5][6]Other typography
Subtitles, such as in Teletext, sometimes use an exclamation mark in brackets to mark sarcasm: (!). The tilde "~" is also sometimes used to indicate sarcasm. Likewise, Karl Marx uses the exclamation mark in brackets repeatedly throughout Das Kapital Volume 1. For example, in one instance, to ridicule Colonel Torrens: The problem is in no way simplified if extraneous matters are smuggled in, as with Colonel Torrens: "effectual demand consists in the power and inclination [!], on the part of the consumers, to give for commodities, either by immediate or circuitous barter...".[7]It is common in online conversation to use a pseudo-HTML element: <sarcasm></sarcasm>.[8] Many times, the opening tag is omitted, due to the HTML tagging often being an afterthought. Similarly, and common in social-news-based sites is a single /s placed at the end of a comment to indicate a sarcastic tone for the preceding text. A "rolling eyes" Emoticon is often used as well, particularly in Instant messaging.[citation needed]
See also
- Question mark (?)
- Mirrored question mark
- Scare quotes
- Inverted question and exclamation marks (¿¡)
- Interrobang (‽)
- Emoticon
References
- ^ Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, 2003. p. 142. ISBN 1-592-40087-6.
- ^ a b c Proposal to add Medievalist and Iranianist punctuation characters to the UCS by Michael Everson, Peter Baker, Marcus Dohnicht, António Emiliano, Odd Einar Haugen, Susana Pedro, David J. Perry, Roozbeh Pournader.
- ^ a b http://thesnark.org/history/
- ^ "A Roadmap to the Extension of the Ethiopic Writing System Standard Under Unicode and ISO-10646". 15th International Unicode Conference. 1999. p. 6. http://yacob.org/papers/DanielYacob-IUC15.pdf.
- ^ "FAQ". Thesnark.org. 2007-06-14. http://thesnark.org/faq/. Retrieved 2010-02-21.
- ^ "Typofile: Irony Mark???". Typophile.com. http://www.typophile.com/node/28817. Retrieved 2010-02-21.
- ^ Marx, Karl (1976), Capital Volume I, Penguin Classics , p. 264, ISBN 0-140-44568-4
- ^ "HTML 5 Specification section 8.2.5.10 The "in body" insertion mode". W3C. http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#parsing-main-inbody.
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