Talk:Irony punctuation

message: Is there an alt code that will produce such a mark? I haven't been able to find one  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.26.127.165 (talk) 22:27, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No Alt code that I know of. Rishida's excellent work in this area indicates that one could use ⸮ for HTML work; but many computers, browsers, and the like still cannot display this code. A simple substitute could be the Arabic Reverse Question Mark (؟) which displays quite nicely on my Win7-based HP PC running Chrome-de-jour so, presumably, elsewhere. Further investigations could be made if one so desires: https://people.w3.org/rishida/uniview/ with Show Block set to Punctuation/Supplemental Punctuation. JimScott (talk) 15:52, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: How to produce the mark

message: "In some internet forums, green text is used to signify irony.[14]"
Is this really a general rule? I've never seen it before, it seems like a creative solution used only(?) by one particular forum.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaminix (talk • contribs) 20:56, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Internet forums 

message: Contemporary Discussion
I have just started a discussion on Typophile.com, a forum for text-using graphic designers and type designers (who construct fonts), suggesting an alternate design, broader applicationn and method of painless implementation for the irony mark. I also include my reasoning for it's advocation, and for the purpose of my proposed design. In the thread, I actually propose it's use for not only for irony, but also as a sarcasm mark and to reveal false subtlety or innuendo, and any other application where the missiing verbal intonation might have clarified a commentsd contradictory meaning. I suggest calling the collective uses all the irony mark, to both keep things simple and because Irony is not only the most umbrella-like term, but can legitimately be other things besides an explicit contradiction to expected circumstances.
Feel free to drop on by and take a look there,
http://typophile.com/node/28817
or at my suggessted design guide and examples at
http://www.exclamachine.com/snark
--Choz 22:40, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This talk page is for discussing improvements to the article, not for general discussion of the article's topic. - SummerPhDv2.0 23:08, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Off topic chat 

message: * If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular
* I'd give you a taste but your tongue's in the stew
Now it's worse, these sentences are jokes not irony!! Irony is when you say the opposite of what you think to show that it can't be right. Martious 20:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Irony is also using a word for something other than its literal meaning, which would account for the first statement. And the second statement is actually situational irony(giving someone a taste of something when they have no tongue would be pointless) and the use of the word taste is subtly ironic in itself. While I agree that jokes are not necessarily appropriate in an encyclopedia article, your definition of irony is narrow. --Shadowdrak 22:11, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Jokes

message: I don't know if it's worth noting, but here in the UK, bracketed exclamation marks are used on TV subtitles to indicate sarcasm:
:Oh, that's just perfect(!)
David 13:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What if the sarcasm is too calm to use an exclamation mark? OrangeAipom (talk) 02:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternatives 

message: I've only just found this page, but I find it misconceived. The new 'irony mark' will sink or swim as readers will, but the reversed question-mark first appears (to the best of my knowledge) in the late C16, where it functions as a punctus percontativus, indicating what it Latin would be called a percontation, as distinct from the punctus interrogativus, our standard question-mark, indicating an interrogation. It can be found in print in Gilbie's edition of the Psalms and in MS in (among others) the hand of Ralph Crane, who provided copy for several texts in Shakespeare's First Folio. For details see the magisterial and seminal work by M. B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Scolar Press, 1992).
In Latin the distinction of questions is fairly strict: an interrogation (from rogare, the root of pro/rogation) demands the answer yes or no, whereas a percontation (from roots embodying the idea of sounding unknown water with a pole) doesn't. 'Did you do it?' is interrogative, 'Why did you do it?[but reverse that mark]' is a percontative. Latin has at least two other verbs of enquiry, quaestio and scisitare; English isn't exactly poor in them, but relies heavily on 'question' and 'interrogate' + Germanic 'ask', and isn't always very clear on the distinctions. The problem is exposed if one points out that the percontations Gilbie and others marked might also in English be called 'rhetorical questions'--a phrase whose own inadequacies (deliberately) blur, for example, any distinction between a question not meant to be answered and one that cannot be answered, or cannot be answered in time or in a particular context : in any of which cases 'irony' might supervene. And people don't use marks they don't clearly understand: look at the ebb of the semi-colon.
Practically speaking, the reason the percontation-mark didn't catch on, nor the French irony-mark cited at the beginning of the page under discussion, is simply that it required a new piece of type. The inverted Spanish initial question-mark, by contrast, may have been mandated by the Real Academia Espanola in 1754, but they could have mandated all they liked if it had not been possible to set the 'new' mark simply by using an inverted piece of existing type. The percontation-mark, being reversed rather than inverted, cannot be so type-set. I suspect myself that wrong-fount question-marks (esp. in blackletter) may sometimes have been used, but historically it's clear that while some were cast for particular printers, the extra expense + lack of obvious English rationale, did for it. True, the financial-pragmatic problem is now side-stepped, and with laser printers etc. all bets are off as far as the evolution of punctuation is concerned. But as far as really establishing such a mark goes ...
--John.C.Lennard 00:29, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See , among others.  — DIV (128.250.204.118 07:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I think John C. Lennard's reasoning is very good and agree that this mark will sink or swim depending on readers.  Unfortunately.  Because (apropos re-inventing the wheel) this mark is for readers who can't or won't use their brains to understand what is being said, and therefore they need to have it explained to them.  Should an example of dramatic irony be so punctuated in the script of the play?  Conversely, will adding this mark to "rain on your wedding day" actually make it ironic?  24.27.31.170 (talk) 16:28, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Percontation (← Reinventing the wheel) 

message: I have added a request for experts to this page and for a rewrite to the article itself. Lets hope things get better. I have listed myself as a maintainer, and I believe I can be contacted (emailed) from my user page. However, I welcome discussion here first. My wiki-coding skills are minimal. In late August, I will attempt, with the aid of machine translation, to make an English language version of the article discussing the history of the irony mark. If anyone is fluent in French, they are welcome to take over that task, and I will host it.--Choz 23:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Templates added

message: "In 1912, the writer Ambrose Bierce proposed a new punctuation device called a “snigger point,” a smiling face represented by \__/!, to connote jocularity."<Br>
excerpted from 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/fashion/29emoticon.htm?pagewanted=2&_r=1 ((-: Just Between You and Me ;-)), emphasis added.<Br>
—DIV (128.250.204.118 07:36, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Snigger point 

message: Isn't that the purpose of the double exclamation point?
  ‼ → ‼
--Belg4mit (talk) 19:14, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not mentioned at !!, where a couple of other uses are given.  No suggestions in .  —DIV (128.250.80.15 (talk) 09:28, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

text: it's exactly works as -?!- (I tell you)
Tabascofernandez (talk) 04:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Synonym 

message: is the main image a square? --Jakezing (talk) 00:02, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  why 

message: at all points when i see this character appears i see this image;
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/204/ironyhy3.jpg
i'm unsure if that is the character the article is about or if i'm seeing that because my computer doesn't support the character. if this is the case then the article should be altered to use an image file of the character in place of the character itself so that there is no confusion.
but then if that is the correct character none of this matters.
--81.23.56.12 (talk) 16:21, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It must be cause I updated my computer to read all text.. got tired of that [] crap.--Ssteiner209 (talk) 13:42, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Am i seeing this character correctly? 

message: Isn't it just waiting to be made famous?  In creative literature (and uncreative literature i.e. maddox.xmission com) (removed link) isn't this gem just waiting to be made famous?  Whoever makes it famous would rightfully be mentioned in this article.  
I'm taking a creative writing class and I feel this is an excellent question, and belongs in the article if I can be allowed to cite it with a source that says "many people become famous and make a literary technique popular in parallel fashion, so that they can be associated with it".  i.e. the maestro lewis carroll
Can someone tell me kindly if this violates WP:synth because it does and it doesn't.  I've retired as an editor but am obsessed for scoring a home-run (but no hard feelings, if using a broad source to purport a narrow detail is just my being selfish).  I can handle constructive criticism. Sentriclecub (talk) 15:48, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  I a lit major and the article provoked a begging question 

message: Worth mentioning perhaps that the irony mark has effectively been superseded by the smiley? — 217.46.147.13 (talk) 13:26, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Smileys 

message: Is this not a commercial stunt? -- Evertype·✆ 22:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it is indeed, so I'm removing PabloBM (talk) 10:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Commercial stunt"? Are you implying something about me or something about the company responsible for the SarcMarc? ---J.S  (T/C/WRE) 19:43, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  SarcMarc 

message: Who here has a P.H.D. in question marks? lol  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.93.4.41 (talk) 08:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect that "question marks" is not a topic that you can get a Ph.D in. More likely I'd suspect that punctuation would fall under Doctor of Education (Ed.D) rather then a Doctor of Philosophy. ---J.S  (T/C/WRE) 19:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

text: and I, I'm a professional comment writer (in my native language news sites). I can honestly say to you that I need this, for expressing my feeling, if I wanna my comments to be effective and easily understandable. I hugely also use brackets, braces, parenthesis, half-spaces ... etc. I have my own phd.
Tabascofernandez (talk) 04:08, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  P.H.D. in question marks 

message: Merge discussion section created since there didn't seem to be one.
Well, I'm in favour of it, since it made a brief news splash and hasn't appeared much since. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 16:41, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge of [[SarcMark]] 

message: The disambiguation page for "Zing" directs here, but the term is not mentioned in the article... -- IdS (talk) 10:06, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zing 

message: Ridiculous! A huge encyclopaedic hatnote? -- Evertype·✆ 01:14, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Hatnote

message: The article is hardly just about the Iron Mark. Currently it discusses four different punctuation marks: Irony Mark, Percontation Point, Temherte Slaq, and SarcMark, with no real reason to feature the Irony Mark over the other three in the article title and lead other than the fact that the other pages were merged into this page for convenience. All four marks relate similar things in a sentence, so perhaps renaming the page to something to reflect that? Or even to reversed question mark to cover the graphic character of the Irony Mark and Percontation Point? Regardless, I think the lead needs to be rewritten to reflect this. The Percontation Point predates the Irony Mark, and the SarcMark certainly seems to have more media coverage than the Irony Mark which I've never seen mentioned. In fact, there may even be a case to unmerge the SarcMark and/or Temherte Slaq if the article isn't renamed to focus on the meaning of the punctuation seeing as they use a different symbol than the Irony Mark or Percontation Point (regardless, the SarcMark info, if kept, should feature the graphic somewhere on the page). If anything the Percontation Point should get preference as it predates all the other marks and none of them are widely used to have a common choice, but I think a title reflecting their usage rather than form/name would be most appropiate. 209.2.224.108 (talk) 20:33, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to move the page to the title "Irony Punctuation" to reflect the new information it contains.Hero1843 (talk) 16:31, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Renaming the article? 

message: This section has no references.  Is there any reason it shouldn’t simply be deleted? Ewx (talk) 09:33, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Still no refs, so I’ve deleted it. Someone can add it back if they find any evidence of it actually being true. Ewx (talk) 08:14, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vertical bar 

message: This character won't display in either Chrome or Firefox. All articles on fonts, glyphs, unicode etc should be required to have image files for them.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.229.60.94 (talk) 21:58, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You might want to try using a different computer, or getting rendering support for special characters. It's probably just  problem on your computer because, if Chrome and Firefox couldn't handle special characters, neither would be very popular. What operating system do you use?"User:Nicky Nouse" is not a valid HTML tag. See Help:HTML in wikitext. 04:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm using Chrome on Windows 7 and it shows up as an empty box for me. CanadianJudoka (talk) 01:01, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Me too, no problems with any of the other characters in the article, or in general elsewhere - suggests the problem is here and not with our computers, yes?  As what the character looks like is all or nothing for this article, it should be an image. Same occurs in IE10. Halsteadk (talk) 19:41, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

text: Thus illustrating one of the many dangers associated with complicated schemes such as Unicode when operating across myriad uncoordinated systems like "modern" personal computing devices (and don't get me started on phones/phablets/pads/other assorted nonsense). For the purposes of this discussion however, might I humbly suggest that for the mean time we simply substitute ؟ (x061F) in this article until the code mavens have caught up with the marketing mavens. There is probably an underlying technical issue -- the ؟complicated scheme؟ ?? -- as to why this has not been done thus far since it is a rather obvious solution ... but then Mom always did say I had a gift for the obvious. LOL Just a thought. JimScott (talk) 15:36, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irony - Won't display on Firefox or Chrome 

message: Would it be favorable to use CSS to make the SVG images of the special characters blend in better with the text?
One example:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit
which would make:
 Lorem ipsum dolor sit
As you can see, when you hover over the love point, there is a "text cursor" and no link, so it is pretty much impossible to tell the text and image apart.
"User:Nicky Nouse" is not a valid HTML tag. See Help:HTML in wikitext. 04:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blend in special marks 

message: There is a reference to something called the snark mark in this entry.  In examining the cited references for this mark, it appears that all the references are written by Choz Cunningham, who appears to be wiki editor Choz, a frequent editor on this topic.  I am by no means an expert editor, but the confluence of the creator of this mark also being a wiki editor as well as the sole reference for the mark seems un-encyclopedic to me.  I also question the notability of the snark mark.  I suggest that either a third party reference to this snark mark be found and added or the entry related to the mark be removed.  205.152.67.36 (talk) 22:27, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The glyph's official site, http://thesnark.org/, is mostly moderated by Choz Cunningham. —Preceding signed comment added by Nicky Nouse (talk • contribs • wikia) 02:10, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Snark Mark - Is it valid? 

message: Karl Marx used (!) in Das Kapital not to mark sarcasm. He used it when quoting other authors to ridicule their choice of words, but isn't that a different matter, more like (sic)?--Biologos (talk) 11:39, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: as you said, I think he used it after words not at the end of sentences. it can be took as "internal" exclamation of author. at end of a sentence -!?- (or spanish ¡) should be used; I think.
Tabascofernandez (talk) 04:10, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Karl Marx,  sarcasm and (!) 

message: In social media, I have witnessed a large use of the question mark between parenthesis (?) as a sign of irony. That has been documented, as far as I could find, here and here. I thought it might be a valuable contribution to the article.
Ohomemcueca (talk) 03:16, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: you can omit left parenthesis and replace the right one with an exclamation mark. I learned it for the first time in my favorite comic magazine.
Tabascofernandez (talk) 03:50, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of (?) as irony mark in Spanish language 

message: The way the character (U+2E2E; ⸮) is displayed in the top of the sidebar - the natural first or second place for a user to look for it - shows a 'can not display' character for me. (Google Chrome Desktop Version 49.0.2623.112) There was some discussion related to this previously, but obviously it never took off because the problem still exists. In addition, there are a couple other places in the article (for example, in the first paragraph of 'Point' (That's not an external link but Wikipedia insists on adding it because it's to a specific section.)) that inline SVGs should be used instead of the actual characters and are not being used.
This seems silly to me and I think it should be fixed. I would do it myself, except inline images confuse me and templates confuse me even more. To that end, I have compiled a list of resources that could be used to help display these characters:
* Irony mark full, c/o Wikimedia Commons (SVG)
* Google Image Searches for irony mark and irony mark svg (not very useful)
* The fileformat.info page for U+2E2E Reverse Question Mark, fileformat.info's png and svg files for that codepoint, and a page that has png's of that codepoint in may different fonts
* A Google Search for the character itself
* The Graphemica page on it (not very useful)
Hope this helps improve the article!
PiNerd3 (talk) 03:40, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah, I don't see it either. Why on earth isn't there an image for this of us who don't have whatever font it is that  displa
ys  it? So I patched in the SVG  cited above. Probably will be reverted by some anal type who thinks we should all upgrade our browser/OS to view a webpage. 202.81.249.166 (talk) 13:18, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Showing the actual character for users 

message: my way
I always use in  my comments -?!- for this purpose. and -!?- for a quite different sense. [it's not irony, it might be understood as "huh-what"] so first one can be shown as -¿- {because it doesn't need any answer, and the second as -¡-.
Tabascofernandez (talk) 03:45, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: This page is for discussing improvements to the article, not for general discussion of the article's topic. - SummerPhDv2.0 04:10, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Off topic chat

message: Why is the cited source for the AlTeRnAtInG cApS usage indicating sarcasm marked as an unreliable source? I would consider knowyourmeme.com to be the definitive source on internet memes. Harperska (talk) 01:23, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable source? 

message: I think alternating caps should be mentioned here. The article on alternating caps says it resembles a mocking tone, but I think one could also say it resembles irony to some degree or in some cAsEs. Bransje (talk) 21:52, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alaternating caps 

message: In the article under the section Other typography the article states "CollegeHumor jokingly proposed new marks called “sarcasticies” which resemble ragged, or zig-zagged parentheses, used to enclose sarcastic remarks." Why is this line included? It only references a primary source and does not seem to have had any effect on irony marks. bop34 • talk • contribs 15:42, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is the line about College Humor included? 

message: To add to this article: mention of the sarcastrophe (^), used to surround phrases uttered in an ironic fashion. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 03:15, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: To add to article

message: Why does it say that people who use reddit use /s? that's not reddit specific whatsoever it's much more associated (from my perspective at least, as a digital citizen) with neurodivergent communities. Not to say that my personal anecdotal experience should be the core of any article, but still it's definitely not specific to reddit. 51.37.160.36 (talk) 20:32, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reddit? 

message: Is there a way to actually reverse italics? Because, I've wanted that feature since forever, but not necessarily to indicate sarcasm. -- sion8 Contributions | Tᴀʟᴋ ᴘᴀɢᴇ 18:26, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverse italics? 

message: The symbol for iron, get it? 
Brought to notice by Harry Shearer on his Le Show in the 1990s where he reported it as a sincere submission. Wikidbuzzz (talk) 21:31, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion from Germany: Fe