{"id":2052,"date":"2010-01-16T14:29:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-16T18:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2052"},"modified":"2010-01-17T11:54:33","modified_gmt":"2010-01-17T15:54:33","slug":"sarcasm-punctuation-mark-sure-to-succeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2052","title":{"rendered":"Sarcasm punctuation mark sure to succeed:-!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2010\/01\/15\/sarcasm\">Via John Gruber at Daring Fireball<\/a>, I've learned that a company called Sarcasm, Inc., is marketing a \"Sarcasm punctuation mark\" called <a href=\"http:\/\/02d9656.netsoljsp.com\/SarcMark\/modules\/user\/commonfiles\/loadhome.do\">SarcMark<\/a>, which people are supposed to use to \"emphasize a sarcastic phrase, sentence or message\". John Gruber's pitch-perfect assessment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What a great idea. I'm sure it'll be a huge hit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emoticon'\">According to Wikipedia<\/a>, the stock of Eastern emoticons includes one conveying \"shifty, suspicious: could also be sarcasm\": (&lt; . &lt;) And the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_emoticons\">full list of emoticons<\/a> gives :-! and \u00ac\u00ac. I'm not familiar with any of these free options. I think one can begin to get a sense for why there isn't really a dedicated sarcasm emoticon by looking at the \"Best examples\" that Sarcasm, Inc., provides. Even having been told what the SarcMark is supposed to do to an utterance, I find all those examples confusing. To the extent that I can make sense of them at all, I seem to need to ignore the SarcMark or interpret it as the trusty :-) or ;-), which convey complex, nuanced meanings that are not inherently sarcastic but which can, of course, be used sarcastically.<\/p>\n<p>I didn't purchase the SarcMark, so I probably can't reproduce it here without getting in trouble, hence the free alternative in my title.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update at about 2:30 PST<\/strong>: In the comments, Ben Zimmer links to his 2007 LL post <a href=\"http:\/\/itre.cis.upenn.edu\/~myl\/languagelog\/archives\/004523.html\">Punctuation, now with heightened indifference<\/a>, which has more details and a useful historical dimension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via John Gruber at Daring Fireball, I've learned that a company called Sarcasm, Inc., is marketing a \"Sarcasm punctuation mark\" called SarcMark, which people are supposed to use to \"emphasize a sarcastic phrase, sentence or message\". John Gruber's pitch-perfect assessment: What a great idea. I'm sure it'll be a huge hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-technology","category-punctuation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}