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 (irony, sarcasm, etc.). It is illustrated by a small, elevated, backward-facing question mark.
It was in turn taken by Hervé Bazin in his book Plumons l’Oiseau ("Let's pluck the bird," 1966), where the author however used another (ψ-like) shape. In doing this, the author proposed five other innovative punctuation marks: the "doubt point", "certitude point", "acclamation point", "authority point", and "love point" .
In March 2007, the Dutch foundation CPNB (Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek) presented another design of an irony mark .
Read more about this topic: Irony Punctuation
Famous quotes containing the words irony and/or mark:
“English audiences of working people are like an instrument that responds to the player. Thought ripples up and down them, and if in some heart the speaker strikes a dissonance there is a swift answer. Always the voice speaks from gallery or pit, the terrible voice which detaches itself in every English crowd, full of caustic wit, full of irony or, maybe, approval.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)