When writing his doctoral dissertation, John in Bardstown, Kentucky, used an upside-down question mark after a comment to indicate he was being sarcastic. Is there a punctuation mark that serves this function? Over the centuries, several have been suggested, including the sartalics font, and particularly online, the sarcasm tilde or mixing uppercase and lowercase letters. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Showing Sarcasm with Punctuation”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hello, this is John Hood in Bardstown, Kentucky, the most beautiful small town in America.
Right there on the bourbon trail.
It’s the bourbon capital of the world.
Yep.
How about that?
Well, welcome to the show, John.
What’s on your mind?
I was wondering about how to express sarcasm in writing.
I know there’s emojis that can express sarcasm, but in formal writing, I found no way to express sarcasm.
And so when I was working on my doctorate back in the 80s, I expressed sarcasm by using an upside down question mark.
And I was wondering if that was correct to utilize it that way.
My professor wanted me to take it out, so I did, and I just made a note that it was speaking sarcastically.
But that’s the only way you can really express in writing that I have found is by stating that it is sarcastic.
I used an upside-down question mark and put a footnote at the bottom to express sarcasm.
I’m not surprised that your professor made you take out the sarcastic remarks.
Well, you left the sarcastic remarks in there.
What kind of dissertation were you writing?
It was a writing on religious education,
And it had to do with utilization of video and computers within the training sessions of small churches.
Well, John, you know, the good news is that you’re not the only person who’s struggled with this problem of how to express sarcasm in writing with punctuation.
As far back as at least the 16th century, people have been looking for ways to use punctuation to indicate that they were being sarcastic.
There was a British printer in 1575 who used a backwards question mark.
In 1668, John Wilkins, the philosopher, used an upside-down exclamation mark.
And for hundreds of years after that, people were trying to, from time to time, come up with something like that.
A lot of French writers use what translated as an irony point.
But, you know, more recently on the Internet, there have been lots of different options for this, like sartalics.
Have you heard of sartalics?
I’ve never heard of the sartalics.
Sartalics.
It’s going to come out for you.
Yeah, sartalics is a kind of font with italics, only the italics lean left and not right.
And if you use a word in sartalics, then you’re being sarcastic.
And other people have found ways like mixing uppercase and lowercase letters in a word to indicate that they were being sarcastic.
And one that I really like is called the sarcasm tilde.
You know, the tilde is that punctuation mark that goes over letters in Spanish, for example, that little curvy one.
And that next to a word sort of is the visual version of a sing-songy voice.
It kind of imitates the voice.
So if you see a tilde next to a word like that, it may be that the person’s using it sarcastically.
John, I got to say, you sound like a man of character and refinement.
You don’t sound like somebody who uses sarcasm much at all.
Well, at times I’m real sarcastic.
But I turn 80 next month.
So you do what you want to.
That’s correct.
And don’t care whether people like it or not.
Well, John, I guess if you want to keep using that upside-down question mark to indicate sarcasm, it’s okay with us.
And now that you’ve been on national radio talking about it, maybe more people will take it up.
I was hoping maybe that that would happen, but we’ll see.
We’ll see.
All right, take care.
And you have a good day.
I’ve enjoyed talking with you.
Yeah.
Good talking with you, John.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
