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 word mark:
“It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)