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.

[komap]

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

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

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]

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: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.

"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:

[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!!!

What it looks like

[rpresser]

U0161 is Latin Small Letter S With Caron