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

The 21st century

[elocinanna]

We've come a long way, baby.

I'd be sarcastic here...

[Drakkenmensch]

... but the thread would probably implode at this point.

Pfft.

[phillymjs]

Oh, a sarcasm punctuation mark. That's a real useful invention!

Re:Pfft.

[Citizen of Earth]

The British already have one. E.g.: Oh, you're so right, I guess I should be more concerned with Bart's safety than covering my own butt(!). And maybe I'm talking like this, because I can't stop(!). HELP ME LISA(!). I HAVE SERIOUS MENTAL PROBLEMS(!).

Re:Pfft.

[komap]

We clearly need a new symbol to indicate irony as well.

so use it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark#Irony_mark

Re:Pfft.

[Enigma23]

We clearly need a new symbol to indicate irony as well.

We've already got one of those - Fe

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:Next time, try writing

[srobert]

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

To the contrary sometimes the laugh track is thrown in because the humor is considered too sophisticated for the audience. (Gilligan's genius was too cutting edge for us.)

Re:My comment is destroying story topic

[jeffmeden]

The special offtopic character is (not displaying here properly, alt-F4) used when you want to steer the conversation toward a disastrous end, a.k.a. trolling. PS I left out the troll I had prepared for the end of this post because Slashdot doesn't display the alt-F4 character.

Meta(meta)[m e t a]

[fyngyrz]

Left out sarcastic end sentence as Slashdot doesn't display the U0161 character."

Slashdot is written in Perl, a language that tends to self-obfuscate within minutes of having been written. Consequently, updating the code base for trivial things like correct display of posted text is highly problematic. Also, even if the Perl implementation was written in non-standard (that is, comprehensible) fashion, 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"

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

[fyngyrz]

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

It is a careful balance between collecting ad revenue and ignoring the shortcomings of the moderation mechanism.

Only the most modern of management techniques have been used to arrive at this complex and deeply nuanced operating strategy; only here, at the heart of the technical community, can we find an implementation that so perfectly reflects (in the sense of reflection about the opposite axis) the technical nature of its users.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it should be pointed out that slashcode (http://www.slashcode.com/) is open source, so feel free to submit patches.

And perl is incomprehensible to everyone, so not knowing the language may actually help you.

"Slashdot doesn't display the U+0161 character"

[AdmiralXyz]

Quelle surprise. Does Slashdot display any Unicode characters correctly, apart from English letters and punctuation? I think I saw some madman use the British pound symbol once, but that was Dark Magic and he was burned at the stake.

Re:Support for the character:

[marcansoft]

Slashdot filters out just about all useful Unicode for no good reason other than laziness. People were abusing control characters, but they were too lazy to make a proper blacklist and instead opted for an almost nonexistent whitelist.

Re:Support for the character:

[thomasdz]

I always used the tilde to indicate "moustache" or "backwards 'S' taking a nap"
since those two concepts rarely entered my on-line conversations, I rarely used the tilde.
But, hey! yeah... I could use the tilde to indicate sarcasm! What a ~great~ idea!

Re:Support for the character:

[NotBornYesterday]

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

cd ~
pwd
/home/sarcasm

Trogdor ?

[Ruvim]

I thought this character is already reserved for Trogdor!!!

Overloading Unicode

[Anonymous Coward]

Please please please please please, dot NOT overload Unicode by assigning a punctuation to U+0161. This is the code for a small s with caron, and is necessary for writing Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Slovak, and other languages. If you want to support a new character, put it in the Private Use Areas. There's over 130,000 code points that are set aside, just for this sort of thing. It's like those idiots trying to support the new Indian Rupee symbol, but end up calling in to question the interpretation of all sorts of data.

Here's the rules:

1. Every assigned code point has a defined meaning. If you are trying to do ANYTHING that means that code point should be interpreted any other way, it is WRONG!

2. Reserved (ie, Unassigned) code points absolutely can NOT be used for information interchange. Reserved code points are two meetings away from being assigned code points, and using them is just as bad as using a code point wrong.

3. There is a place where you can play around. It's called the Private Use Areas. They are three blocks: U+E000-U+F8FF, U+F0000-U+FFFFD, and U+100000=U+10FFFD. You can literally do whatever the heck you want there, no questions asked.

What it looks like

[rpresser]

U0161 is Latin Small Letter S With Caron

Re:What it looks like

[gv250]

U0161 is Latin Small Letter S With Caron

While that may be true, TFA says that the open sarcasm mark is U+00A1, an upside-down exclamation point, to be used at the end of a sentence.

Graphically indistinguishable from U+00A1 () Temherte Slaqî differs in semantic use in Ethiopia. Temherte Slaqî will come at the end of a sentence (vs at the beginning in Spanish use) and is used to indicate an unreal phrase, often sarcastical in editorial cartoons. Temherte Slaqî is also important in children’s literature and in poetic use.

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?

Re:A sarcasm punctuation mark? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you are being sarcastic, but I don't agree that they are geniuses.

About the Ethiopian Sarcasm Mark Temherte Slaq

[surveyork]

At opensarcasm.org they mention the Ethiopian sarcasm mark, the Temherte Slaqî. It's pretty much indistinguishable from the Spanish initial exclamation mark. I'd show it here, but Slashdot doesn't support anything beyond basic ASCII, apparently.

Re:! already works

[$pace6host]

I prefer letting each individual display sarcasm on their screen as they prefer. That's why I enclose my sarcasm in <P> and </P> tags. Aren't those the sarcasm indicators?