Open Sarcasm Fighting Copyrighted Punctuation

pinkushun writes "SarcMark is a copyrighted punctuation mark, that claims 'It's time that sarcasm is treated equally!' Pretty damn cheeky while they're charging for their software, which only inserts their punctuation through a hotkey. Open Sarcasm is destroying SarcMark by advocating a new punctuation mark (not displaying here properly — alt+U0161) as the new open and free sarcasm symbol. Either way, this will be one interesting turnout. With bad unicode support across the web, displaying the characters properly might be an issue. PS Left out sarcastic end sentence as Slashdot doesn't display the U0161 character."

Comments

Next time, try writing

[Palestrina]

If you need a punctuation mark to express sarcasm then you are not doing it right.

It is like a laugh track or a drum rimshot to indicate a joke's punchline. It only accompanies the worst forms of humor.

I'm reminded of Laurence Olivier's remark to Dustin Hoffman, who had subjected himself to sleep deprivation to prepare himself for his role in "Marathon Man". Hoffman came onto the set, looking like hell, and explained what he did to prepare. Olivier said, "Dear chap, next time try acting." No special punctuation mark needed.

Re:Next time, try writing

[impaledsunset]

You're wrong.

Within a spoken conversation sarcasm is usually accompanied by a change in facial expressions or in the voice. It doesn't make it worse, it only makes it better. A sarcastic mark could stand for that, just like an exclamation mark is used when you'd raise your voice, or an emoticon gets used for other emotions. Now, it will probably be abused, just like emoticons and exclamation marks do !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111 :PPPPPP, but nevertheless it serves a purpose. Online sarcasm seems too harsh without a sarcastic mark.

One problem is that there are different expressions that go with sarcasm, not one, both friendly and unfriendly, but written conversation doesn't try to match spoken exactly. They are different forms of conversations with their own intricacies. Adding another mark that allows you to add more to those intricacies is only good.

Re:Next time, try writing

[Palestrina]

I think the general trend over the last 100 years has been to reduce the variety of punctuation marks in use, not increase them. The semi-colon is seldom seen these days, at least not used correctly. It is being replaced by the comma in many cases. Ellipsis is now generally replaced by periods. Hyphens, em- and en-dash are now all conflated, except by typographers and the more fastidious editors. So the general trend is to reduce the number of punctuation marks in use.

Generally, if it is not on their keyboard, users don't use it.

I see no reason to perpetuate the vanity of the Artist Formally Known as Prince for adding new glyphs just to be trendy.

And contrary to freezing language, I'd suggest it should follow practice, but until I actually see sarcastic Ethiopians on Slashdot with their special character, I suggest this is all just idle mischief.

Re:Next time, try writing

[Palestrina]

But ditto for other things as well. I can ask a normal question, a rhetorical question, a negative question, a hesitant question, a imperative question, a leading question, a disbelieving question, even a sarcastic question. Should we have a glyph for each of them? Really? Are you kidding? What makes sarcasm so special compared to every other language nuance that it requires its own glyph?

Re:Meta(meta)[m e t a]

[Anonymous Coward]

...to quote Rob Malda in a recent letter to me, "Unfortunately there really isn't any engineering time available to make any changes these days"

What the hell are they so busy doing? Clearly not editing article submissions.

Re:Support for the character:

[NotBornYesterday]

I suppose it could happen; first initial "S", last name "Arcasm".

cd ~
pwd
/home/sarcasm

Re:No, it's absolutely essential

[Palestrina]

Hard to argue that it is essential if we've had 2500 years of written Indo-European languages and we managed to express sarcasm just fine without requiring another character. If we lacked something essential I assume the Gauls would have added it 1800 years ago. They were far more sarcastic than us moderns.

Note I have nothing against a parenthetical expression or other notation using existing characters. This might be good for expressing a variety of things, like "This sentence is funny" or "This phrase is brilliant" or "This rhymes but only if you pronounce it funny". The later would work very well with Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

A good analogy would be to any of the existing editorial notes we can make, such as "sic" to indicate that something is copied literally, including errors. We didn't need a new character for that, did we?