⸮ | |
---|---|
Irony punctuation |
Irony punctuation is any form of notation proposed or used to denote irony or sarcasm in text. Written text, in English and other languages, lacks a standard way to mark irony, and several forms of punctuation have been proposed to fill the gap. The oldest is the percontation point in the form of a reversed question mark (⸮), proposed by English printer Henry Denham in the 1580s for marking rhetorical questions, which can be a form of irony. Specific irony marks have also been proposed, such as in the form of an open upward arrow (△
|), used by Marcellin Jobard in the 19th century, and in a form resembling a reversed question mark ( ), proposed by French poet Alcanter de Brahm during the 19th century.
Irony punctuation is primarily used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level. A bracketed exclamation point or question mark as well as scare quotes are also occasionally used to express irony or sarcasm.
The percontation point ( ) , a reversed question mark later referred to as a rhetorical question mark, was proposed by Henry Denham in the 1580s and was used at the end of a question that does not require an answer—a rhetorical question. Its use died out in the 17th century. [1] This character can be represented using the reversed question mark (⸮) found in Unicode as U+2E2E; another character approximating it is the Arabic question mark (؟), U+061F.
The modern question mark (? U+003F) is descended from the "punctus interrogativus" (described as "a lightning flash, striking from right to left"), [2] but unlike the modern question mark, the punctus interrogativus may be contrasted with the punctus percontativus—the former marking questions that require an answer while the latter marks rhetorical questions. [3]
In 1668, John Wilkins, in An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language , proposed using an inverted exclamation mark to punctuate rhetorical questions. [4]
In an article dated 11 October 1841, Marcellin Jobard, a Belgian newspaper publisher, introduced an "irony mark" (French : point d'ironie) in the shape of an oversized arrow head with small stem (rather like an ideogram of a Christmas tree). [5] [6] The next year he expanded his idea, suggesting the symbol could be used in various orientations (on its side, upside down, etc.) to mark "a point of irritation, an indignation point, a point of hesitation". [7] [8]
Another irony point (French : point d'ironie) was proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm (alias, Marcel Bernhardt) in his 1899 book L'ostensoir des ironies to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level (irony, sarcasm, etc.). It is illustrated by a glyph resembling, but not identical to, a small, elevated, backward-facing question mark. [3]
Hervé Bazin, in his essay "Plumons l'Oiseau" ("Let's pluck the bird", 1966), used the Greek letter ψ with a dot below for the same purpose ( ). [10] In the same work, the author proposed five other innovative punctuation marks: the "doubt point" ( ), "conviction point" ( ), "acclamation point" ( ), "authority point" ( ), and "love point" ( ). [11]
In March 2007, the Dutch foundation CPNB ( Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek ) presented another design of an irony mark, the ironieteken: ( ). [12] [13]
Tom Driberg recommended that ironic statements should be printed in italics that lean the other way from conventional italics, [14] also called Sartalics. [15]
Scare quotes are a particular use of quotation marks. They are placed around a word or phrase to indicate that it is not used in the fashion that the writer would personally use it. In contrast to the nominal typographic purpose of quotation marks, the enclosed words are not necessarily quoted from another source. When read aloud, various techniques are used to convey the sense, such as prepending the addition of "so-called" or a similar word or phrase of disdain, using a sarcastic or mocking tone, or using air quotes, or any combination of the above.
In certain Ethiopic languages, sarcasm and unreal phrases are indicated at the end of a sentence with a sarcasm mark called temherte slaq [16] [17] or timirte slaq [18] (Amharic: ትእምርተ፡ሥላቅ), [18] [19] a character that looks like the inverted exclamation point (U+00A1) ( ¡ ). [16]
It is common in online conversation among some Internet users to use a fictitious closing tag patterned after HTML: </sarcasm>
. Over time, it has evolved to lose the angle brackets (/sarcasm
) and has subsequently been shortened to /sarc
or /s
(not to be confused with the valid HTML end tag </s>
used to end a struck-through passage). [20] Users of the website Reddit frequently denote sarcasm through the use of /s
, as shorthand. [21] This usage later evolved into tone indicators.
Another example is bracketing text with the symbol for the element iron as a pun of the word "irony" (<Fe>
and </Fe>
) in order to denote irony.
Rhetorical questions in some informal situations can use a bracketed question mark, e.g., "Oh, really[?]
". The equivalent for an ironic or sarcastic statement would be a bracketed exclamation mark, e.g., "Oh, really[!]
". Subtitles, such as in Teletext, sometimes use an exclamation mark within brackets or parentheses to mark sarcasm. [22]
Another method of expressing sarcasm is by placing a tilde (~
) adjacent to the punctuation. This allows for easy use with any keyboard, as well as variation. Variations include dry sarcasm (~.
), enthusiastic sarcasm (~!
), and sarcastic questions (~?
). The sports blog Card Chronicle has adopted this methodology by inserting (~
) after the period at the end of the sentence. [23] It has also been adopted by the Udacity Machine Learning Nanodegree community. [24]
On the Internet, it is common to see alternating uppercase and lowercase lettering to convey a mocking or sarcastic tone, often paired with an image of SpongeBob SquarePants acting like a chicken in the form of memes. [25] [ better source needed ]
Typing in all-capital letters, and emoticons like "Rolling eyes" ( ), ":>
", and ":P
/ , as well as using the "victory hand" dingbat / emoji ( ) character to simulate air quotes, are often used as well, particularly in instant messaging, while a Twitter-style hashtag, #sarcasm
, is also increasingly common. [26]
The upside-down face emoji ( ) is often used to convey sarcasm. [27] However, it can also be understood to indicate a variety of subtle or concealed emotions. These can include annoyance, indignation, panic, mockery, and other more ambiguous feelings. [28] [29] [30]
In many gaming communities, the word "Kappa" is frequently used to display sarcasm as well as joking intent. This is due to the word acting as an emoticon on Twitch, a livestreaming site, where it has gained popularity for such purpose. [31]
CollegeHumor jokingly proposed new marks called "sarcastisies" which resemble ragged, or zig-zagged parentheses, used to enclose sarcastic remarks. [32]
A "SarcMark" symbol requiring custom computer font software was proposed in 2010. [33]
An emoticon, short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings, mood, or reaction, without needing to describe it in detail.
Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of written text should be read and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, consisting of points between the words and horizontal strokes between sections. The alphabet-based writing began with no spaces, no capitalization, no vowels, and with only a few punctuation marks, as it was mostly aimed at recording business transactions. Only with the Greek playwrights did the ends of sentences begin to be marked to help actors know when to make a pause during performances. Punctuation includes space between words and the other, historically or currently used, signs.
The question mark? is a punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages.
The inverted question mark, ¿, and inverted exclamation mark, ¡, are punctuation marks used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences or clauses in Spanish and some languages which have cultural ties with Spain, such as Asturian and Waray languages. The initial marks are mirrored at the end of the sentence or clause by the 'ordinary' question mark, ?, or exclamation mark, !.
The interrobang, also known as the interabang‽, is an unconventional punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark and the exclamation mark. The glyph is a ligature of these two marks and was first proposed in 1962 by Martin K. Speckter.
A rhetorical question is a question asked for a purpose other than to obtain information. In many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying or emphasizing the speaker's or author's opinion on a topic.
An emoji is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of modern emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation as well as to replace words as part of a logographic system. Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, expressions, activity, food and drinks, celebrations, flags, objects, symbols, places, types of weather, animals and nature.
In Indic scripts, the daṇḍa is a punctuation mark. The glyph consists of a single vertical stroke.
〒 is the service mark of Japan Post and its successor, Japan Post Holdings, the postal operator in Japan. It is also used as a Japanese postal code mark since the introduction of the latter in 1968. Historically, it was used by the Ministry of Communications, which operated the postal service. The mark is a stylized katakana syllable te (テ), from the word teishin. The mark was introduced on February 8, 1887.
The exclamation mark(!) is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks the end of a sentence, for example: "Watch out!". Similarly, a bare exclamation mark is often used in warning signs. The exclamation mark is often used in writing to make a character seem as though they are shouting, excited, or surprised.
The right-to-left mark (RLM) is a non-printing character used in the computerized typesetting of bi-directional text containing a mix of left-to-right scripts and right-to-left scripts.
Japanese punctuation includes various written marks, which differ from those found in European languages, as well as some not used in formal Japanese writing but frequently found in more casual writing, such as exclamation and question marks.
Chinese punctuation has punctuation marks that are derived from both Chinese and Western sources. Although there was a long native tradition of textual annotation to indicate the boundaries of sentences and clauses, the concept of punctuation marks being a mandatory and integral part of the text was only adapted in the written language during the 20th century due to Western influence.
The Latin-1 Supplement is the second Unicode block in the Unicode standard. It encodes the upper range of ISO 8859-1: 80 (U+0080) - FF (U+00FF). C1 Controls (0080–009F) are not graphic. This block ranges from U+0080 to U+00FF, contains 128 characters and includes the C1 controls, Latin-1 punctuation and symbols, 30 pairs of majuscule and minuscule accented Latin characters and 2 mathematical operators.
Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection with which it is spoken or, with an undercurrent of irony, by the extreme disproportion of the comment to the situation, and is largely context-dependent.
Irony, in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected. It typically figures as a rhetorical device and literary technique. In some philosophical contexts, however, it takes on a larger significance as an entire way of life.
CJK Symbols and Punctuation is a Unicode block containing symbols and punctuation used for writing the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. It also contains one Chinese character.
General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic and novel punctuation such as the interrobang, and invisible mathematical operators.
A tone indicator or tone tag is a symbol attached to a sentence or message sent in a textual form, such as over the internet, to explicitly state the intonation or intent of the message, especially when it may be otherwise ambiguous. Tone indicators start with a forward slash (/
), followed by a short series of letters, usually a shortening of another word. Examples include /j
, meaning "joking"; /srs
, meaning "serious"; or /s
, meaning "sarcastic".
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)