IRONY MARKS - Fantastic Fact 17

Subtitles

Did you know there's a punctuation

mark for irony? Actually, there

are several, or rather, there

were several proposed. Proposed

as far back as the 1580s and as

recently as 2007, the currently

recognized, yet largely forgotten,

irony mark is this one. It is

essentially a backwards question

mark and would be used for sarcastic

comments or rhetorical questions.

Unfortunately, as with the interrobang,

this symbol is almost entirely

forgotten in society. I'm not

sure why but it's probably because

keyboards are already overflowing

and can barely hold the symbols

they have already, and probably

just that people can usually tell

what is intended as sarcasm based

on context. Not to mention emojis

which are arguably better at portraying

irony then a punctuation mark

could ever be.