5 ms·

Irony punctuation

30 points by tswicegood 16y ago

trafficlight 16y ago
Where's the fun in sarcasm if you have to point it out?
- hugh3 16y ago
  This is, of course, why it hasn't caught on in the ~400+ years since it was originally proposed. Also, many of those who have at some point proposed it may or may not have been doing so ironically, so at some point it gets pretty confusing.
  - ugh 16y ago
    Well, there’s this widely used gem: ‘;-)’ Why did people suddenly adopt a symbol for clearly marking their irony when before they have not? My hypothesis is that prior to the mass adoption of mobile phones (SMS) and the Internet (IM, e-mail, any form of chat and discussion) it was nearly impossible (well, unpractical) to have informal conversations with someone in written form. Even letters or postcards are very much unlike e-mail, a lot more formal, for the most part carefully crafted and lacking the immediacy of our new forms of written communication. We used speech for all our informal conversations up until very recently. Everyone knows how to mark speech as ironic. You can literally wink, change the tone of your voice or just start grinning after everyone starts looking at you with disbelief. When authors wanted to use irony in their works they had the time, space and skills to create a setup which marks something as irony, a typographic sign would probably have seemed like cheating to them (much like overuse of the exclamation mark would). But suddenly there are all these people who are not authors and who write all the time if they want to have a conversation. Time, space and skills – the three of those are not readily available when chatting. (And why should they, why should you suddenly invest more time to conduct your informal conversation just because it is in written form?) I think it works quite well, actually, for what it is, compared to its cousin in spoken informal conversations at least. Sure, it’s not even the same ballpark as some of the irony you can find in literary masterpieces but hardly anything we say in everyday conversations ever is. (For testing my hypothesis I would suggest finding written pre-Internet conversations – if the is at all possible – and looking for any marks for irony or tone of voice. Pretty much seems like an impossible thing to check, if you ask me.)
    - jrockway 16y ago
      Sarcasm is most interesting when you don't "wink, change the tone of your voice or just start grinning". Good sarcasm is detectable as such even without any change in inflection, which is why there is no need to mark it in writing. I also disagree that smileys are widely used to mark sarcasm; they mark any sort of situation where you might smile. Most of the time, this is just some sort of happy statement, like "now go get some sleep ;)" when someone emails you at 3 in the morning.
      - ugh 16y ago
        I’m not sure you are disagreeing with me. ‘Good’ (using scare quotes here because I think the fake kind is also a valuable tool) sarcasm is fucking hard to pull off! That’s why you hardly ever see it. That’s why writers didn’t need a typographic sign. And sure, the winking smiley is also used for other things but do you really want to claim that it’s not widely used for marking irony? If it were easier to search for ‘;-)’ I would probably be able to quote a few dozen examples here on HN alone in no time.
        jrockway 16y ago
        I would probably be able to quote a few dozen examples here on HN alone in no time. Maybe those people are just using it wrong ;)
        ugh 16y ago
        See, here’s how I would parse that: Clearly, there is no way marking sarcasm with a winking smiley could be considered ‘using it wrong’ because there isn’t anything like rules for emoticon usage (and if there were that would be stupid), hence I’m tacitly agreeing with your comment. Amazing ;-)
      - nandemo 16y ago
        Sarcasm is most interesting when you don't "wink, change the tone of your voice or just start grinning". Whoa there, jrockway. Soon you'll be proposing sitcoms without laugh tracks.
- senki 16y ago
  Self defense. The ones who don't (can't ?) get the jokes are generally quite dangerous...
zbanks 16y ago
Thank god. I thought this was going to be a link to the "SarcMark" http://02d9656.netsoljsp.com/SarcMark/modules/user/commonfiles/loadhome.do http://02d9656.netsoljsp.com/SarcMark/modules/user/commonfil... That movement was just really poorly thought out. Yeah, let's choose some bizarre symbol and charge people to use it on their computers... but only people who have also paid for the software can also see it. Yeah, real smart there⸮ I do, however, approve of the irony mark. I mapped pidgin to autoreplace ?/ with it in IMs. That way everyone gets to see my snobbery.
- chrischen 16y ago
  I also don't see how they got so much media coverage. I think it was 'cause the idea was so blatantly stupid that people thought it was a joke. It was on local news here in the Metro detroit area and it got newspaper articles written up. That's all precious media coverage that could go to my web app instead. Their website is also horrible.
- nevinera 16y ago
  There's an easy way to insert unicode characters just about anywhere, if you're using Ubuntu at least: Ctrl-Shift-u, [hex value], enter. C-S-u 2e2e <enter>: ⸮
  - zbanks 16y ago
    Oh, it's possible, but it's easier to use if there's a quick shortcut. I love how Gnome handles unicode insertion though.
mikeknoop 16y ago
I think this is relevant: http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/smiley.asp http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/smiley.asp
confuzatron 16y ago
Ironically, the irony punctuation mark shows up as a square on all browsers that I try. (yes I know - that's not actually ironic).
- moobot 16y ago
  It only does this for me on Windows. On Linux, I see the proper glyph.
lurkinggrue 16y ago
I love this⸮

Irony punctuation

30 points by tswicegood 16y ago

trafficlight 16y ago

Where's the fun in sarcasm if you have to point it out?

hugh3 16y ago
This is, of course, why it hasn't caught on in the ~400+ years since it was originally proposed. Also, many of those who have at some point proposed it may or may not have been doing so ironically, so at some point it gets pretty confusing.
- ugh 16y ago
  Well, there’s this widely used gem: ‘;-)’ Why did people suddenly adopt a symbol for clearly marking their irony when before they have not? My hypothesis is that prior to the mass adoption of mobile phones (SMS) and the Internet (IM, e-mail, any form of chat and discussion) it was nearly impossible (well, unpractical) to have informal conversations with someone in written form. Even letters or postcards are very much unlike e-mail, a lot more formal, for the most part carefully crafted and lacking the immediacy of our new forms of written communication. We used speech for all our informal conversations up until very recently. Everyone knows how to mark speech as ironic. You can literally wink, change the tone of your voice or just start grinning after everyone starts looking at you with disbelief. When authors wanted to use irony in their works they had the time, space and skills to create a setup which marks something as irony, a typographic sign would probably have seemed like cheating to them (much like overuse of the exclamation mark would). But suddenly there are all these people who are not authors and who write all the time if they want to have a conversation. Time, space and skills – the three of those are not readily available when chatting. (And why should they, why should you suddenly invest more time to conduct your informal conversation just because it is in written form?) I think it works quite well, actually, for what it is, compared to its cousin in spoken informal conversations at least. Sure, it’s not even the same ballpark as some of the irony you can find in literary masterpieces but hardly anything we say in everyday conversations ever is. (For testing my hypothesis I would suggest finding written pre-Internet conversations – if the is at all possible – and looking for any marks for irony or tone of voice. Pretty much seems like an impossible thing to check, if you ask me.)
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Sarcasm is most interesting when you don't "wink, change the tone of your voice or just start grinning". Good sarcasm is detectable as such even without any change in inflection, which is why there is no need to mark it in writing. I also disagree that smileys are widely used to mark sarcasm; they mark any sort of situation where you might smile. Most of the time, this is just some sort of happy statement, like "now go get some sleep ;)" when someone emails you at 3 in the morning.
    - ugh 16y ago
      I’m not sure you are disagreeing with me. ‘Good’ (using scare quotes here because I think the fake kind is also a valuable tool) sarcasm is fucking hard to pull off! That’s why you hardly ever see it. That’s why writers didn’t need a typographic sign. And sure, the winking smiley is also used for other things but do you really want to claim that it’s not widely used for marking irony? If it were easier to search for ‘;-)’ I would probably be able to quote a few dozen examples here on HN alone in no time.
      - jrockway 16y ago
        I would probably be able to quote a few dozen examples here on HN alone in no time. Maybe those people are just using it wrong ;)
        ugh 16y ago
        See, here’s how I would parse that: Clearly, there is no way marking sarcasm with a winking smiley could be considered ‘using it wrong’ because there isn’t anything like rules for emoticon usage (and if there were that would be stupid), hence I’m tacitly agreeing with your comment. Amazing ;-)
    - nandemo 16y ago
      Sarcasm is most interesting when you don't "wink, change the tone of your voice or just start grinning". Whoa there, jrockway. Soon you'll be proposing sitcoms without laugh tracks.
senki 16y ago
Self defense. The ones who don't (can't ?) get the jokes are generally quite dangerous...

zbanks 16y ago

Thank god. I thought this was going to be a link to the "SarcMark" http://02d9656.netsoljsp.com/SarcMark/modules/user/commonfiles/loadhome.do http://02d9656.netsoljsp.com/SarcMark/modules/user/commonfil... That movement was just really poorly thought out. Yeah, let's choose some bizarre symbol and charge people to use it on their computers... but only people who have also paid for the software can also see it. Yeah, real smart there⸮ I do, however, approve of the irony mark. I mapped pidgin to autoreplace ?/ with it in IMs. That way everyone gets to see my snobbery.

chrischen 16y ago
I also don't see how they got so much media coverage. I think it was 'cause the idea was so blatantly stupid that people thought it was a joke. It was on local news here in the Metro detroit area and it got newspaper articles written up. That's all precious media coverage that could go to my web app instead. Their website is also horrible.
nevinera 16y ago
There's an easy way to insert unicode characters just about anywhere, if you're using Ubuntu at least: Ctrl-Shift-u, [hex value], enter. C-S-u 2e2e <enter>: ⸮
- zbanks 16y ago
  Oh, it's possible, but it's easier to use if there's a quick shortcut. I love how Gnome handles unicode insertion though.

mikeknoop 16y ago

I think this is relevant: http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/smiley.asp http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/smiley.asp

confuzatron 16y ago

Ironically, the irony punctuation mark shows up as a square on all browsers that I try. (yes I know - that's not actually ironic).

moobot 16y ago
It only does this for me on Windows. On Linux, I see the proper glyph.

lurkinggrue 16y ago

I love this⸮