Sarcasm – punctuate it

Here is an alert for all you witty writers out there. A company in Michigan thinks our sarcasam is a little misunderstood. Sarcasm, Incorporated, has developed a punctuation mark for those who cannot clearly convey their intentions through text. They would like to charge you $1.99 to install it in your fonts. Meet the SarcMark:

and this is their marketing of that concept:

Stupid Idea? Think About It!

With the spoken word, we use our tone, inflection and volume to question, exclaim and convey our feelings. The written word has question marks and exclamation points to document those thoughts, BUT sarcasm has NOTHING! In today’s world with increasing commentary, debate and rhetoric, what better time could there be than NOW, to ensure that no sarcastic message, comment or opinion is left behind Equal Rights for Sarcasm – Use the SarcMark

Ironically they did not end their marketing spiel with ANY punctuation. Believe it or not, this little download has caused some discussion among serious wordsmiths. We have actually been using sarcasm punctuation for years. The upside down exclamation point has some Ethiopian French origins to be used for the purpose of sarcasm. More recently Joshua Greenman copyrighted the idea in the online magazine Slate in 2004 and spoke about it again this year when the SarcMark was introduced.
And there is a whole manifesto to be found on a site called “Open Sarcasm: Sarcasm to the People“. On it you will find more information and history as well as instructions for using the unicode symbol you already have for free. To be honest, I like the upside down punctuation so much better graphically. What’s better than the reverse of enthusiasm? It fits with sharp witted comments. And before I was introduced to the world of formal sarcasm punctuation I used these.