irony – Page 3 – Shady Characters

Miscellany № 16

September 30, 2012

As eagle-eyed readers of the @shadychars Twitter feed will have noticed, September 24^th was National Punctuation Day. Billed as the “holiday that reminds America that a semicolon is not a surgical procedure”, this year’s event was accompanied by a competition, run by the New Yorker’s Questioningly blog, to design a new mark of punctuation by combining two existing marks. The competition is now closed, and though I won’t spoil the winner for you, I will say that I particularly appreciated @Majo_P’s “commarisk” (,*), used to connect a logically unsound conclusion to a premise, and Andrew Nahem’s “meh” mark (¥<), used to indicate a lack of enthusiasm for something. See more entries and the eventual winner here!

Name that mark: the “approval curl”

April 14, 2012

Bas Jacobs of the European type foundry Underware wrote to Shady Characters with a question: what is this character? It is used to mark correct exam answers in the same way as a tick or check mark, but beyond that its name or derivation is not clear. Bas is no stranger to unusual symbols, being the creator of Underware’s lightning-bolt irony mark, but both he and I are stumped. Here are his thoughts thus far:

Irony & Sarcasm marks, part 3 of 3

October 9, 2011

Ironics notwithstanding, the irony mark lay dormant for much of the latter part of the 20^th century. As had been the case with many other previously obscure marks of punctuation, however, the click-to-publish ease of the web well and truly resusitated its fortunes: more new irony marks appeared in the decade from 2001 to 2010 than in any period before.

Irony & Sarcasm marks, part 3: a short delay, and a request for help

October 1, 2011

I’m afraid the third article in the series on irony and sarcasm marks will have to be be delayed until next weekend. I’ll be discussing modern irony and sarcasm marks — chiefly those which have been proposed and promoted via the Internet — but unfortunately I’m having trouble reaching the creators of the SarcMark. If any Shady Characters readers have had any success in contacting them in the past, it would be great if you could put me in touch with them!

Irony & Sarcasm marks: intermission

September 25, 2011

Adam Rice wrote in response to the discussion of ‘ironics’, or backwards-slanting italics, in Irony & Sarcasm marks, part 2:

I’ve occasionally seen reverse-italics on headstones dating from the 1800s, but I’m confident they’re not being used in a tongue-in-cheek manner.1

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