Irony Punctuation
Although in the written English language there is no standard way to denote irony or sarcasm, several forms of punctuation have been proposed. Among the oldest and frequently attested are the percontation point invented by English printer Henry Denham in the 1580s, and the irony mark, furthered by French poet Alcanter de Brahm in the 19th century. Both of these marks were represented visually by a backwards question mark, ⸮ (in Unicode: U+2E2E ⸮ reversed question mark (HTML: ⸮)). Using LaTeX, one can display it by including the graphicx package, and then using \reflectbox?.
These punctuation marks are 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 sometimes used to express irony or sarcasm.
Read more about Irony Punctuation: Percontation Point, Interrobang, Irony Mark, Scare Quotes, Temherte Slaqî, Other Typography
Famous quotes containing the word irony:
“Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)