“Oh nice, you’re early ” (As stated to somebody who is definitely egregiously late.)

The SarcMark (brief for “sarcasm mark”) is definitely the trademarked creation of a person named Douglas Sak, who markets it as “the official, easy-to-use punctuation mark to emphasise a sarcastic phrase, sentence, or message.” At this time I study this handy little gadget, and sarcasm extra usually.

Etymology

A line drawing from the well-known Shepheards Calender

The phrase sarcasm comes from the Greek σαρκασμός (sarkasmós) which is taken from σαρκάζειν (sarkázein) which means “to tear flesh, chew the lip in rage, sneer”.

It’s first recorded in English in 1579, in an annotation to The Shepheardes Calender by Edmund Spenser.

Nonetheless, the phrase sarcastic, which means “Characterised by or involving sarcasm; given to the usage of sarcasm; bitterly chopping or caustic”, doesn’t truly seem anyplace till 1695.

In fact sarcasm existed earlier than then, it simply didn’t have a reputation!

Enter ‘Sarcasm, Inc.’

Its product, maybe essentially the most progressive and authentic of the century up to now, is a punctuation mark for sarcasm.

And though ­strangers to the mark would possibly mistake it for a squiggle with a dot inside, the “SarcMark” will quickly be turning up in our inboxes daily. The query that may baffle future generations is how we managed to stay with out it for therefore lengthy.”

Like most innovations, the SarcMark got here to be out of necessity.

Doug Sak

Its creator, toy producer and businessman Douglas Sak, was writing an e-mail to a pal and was trying to be sarcastic. It occurred to him that the English Language, and maybe different languages, lacked a punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm.

Sarcasm, Inc. was fashioned in 2006 to pursue this concept, and the punctuation mark for sarcasm got here to life.

Regardless of treading the unchartered territory of inventing a brand new punctuation mark, the shareholders of Sarcasm, Inc. have been pleasantly stunned by the speed at which it has unfold and the calls for for the SarcMark to be out there on numerous platforms.

Sarcasm, Inc. states that they intend to relentlessly pursue growth and unfold what is an easy thought, however they consider completely vital within the sarcastic world we stay in at the moment.

Alcanter de Brahm understood the necessity to categorical irony

The primary SarcMarks?

It’s shocking, given the straightforward ­brilliance of the thought, that it has by no means been overtly steered earlier than, though linguistically we have now usually sought to precise irony or sarcasm in typography. ­

Among the many oldest and incessantly attested related marks are the percontation level—furthered by Henry Denham within the 1580s. However its use died out a couple of century later,

In 1668, John Wilkins, in An Essay in direction of a Actual Character and a Philosophical Language, proposed utilizing an inverted exclamation mark to punctuate ironic statements. In 1841, Marcellin Jobard, a Belgian newspaper writer, launched an irony mark within the form of an outsized arrow head with small stem (reasonably like an ideogram of a Christmas tree). The following yr he expanded his thought, suggesting the image may very well be utilized in numerous orientations (on its facet, the other way up, and so forth.) to mark “a degree of irritation, an indignation level, a degree of hesitation”.

On the left you may see an “Irony mark” as displayed in a French encyclopedia from 1905. This irony level (level d’ironie) was proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm (alias, Marcel Bernhardt) in his 1899 e-book L’ostensoir des ironies to point {that a} sentence needs to be understood at a second degree (as involving irony, sarcasm, and so forth.). It’s illustrated by a glyph resembling, however not an identical to, a small, elevated, backward-facing query mark. ^{The identical mark was used earlier by Marcellin Jobard in an article dated June 11, 1841.}

Hervé Bazin, in his essay “Plumons l’Oiseau” (1966), used the Greek letter ψ with a dot under for a similar goal (). In the identical work, the creator proposed 5 different progressive punctuation marks: the “doubt level” (), “conviction level” (), “acclamation level” (), “authority level” (), and even a “love level” ().

In March 2007, the Dutch basis CPNB (Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek) introduced one other design of an irony mark, the ironieteken: ()And US author and satirist Josh Greenman proposed the upside-down exclamation mark as a “sarcasm level” in an article for Slate journal in 2004.

The are quite a few different options to precise sarcasm already in use, from emoticons akin to :p, (a tongue protruding), 😉 (a winking eye), and others, to pseudo-html markers akin to [/s] and </sarcasm>, however none are prone to be an ­impediment to the SarcMark’s predicted success.

However in our view, none match as much as the scribbled brilliance of the SarcMark.

The actual breakthrough of ­Sarcasm, Inc is the conclusion that, ­regardless of having used sarcasm and irony within the written phrase for a whole bunch of years, people are merely not wired to constantly recognise when somebody has stated the ­reverse of what they imply when writing. (And generally when they’re beiong spoken to – see under.) The SarcMark solves that downside the place writing is anxious, and you may obtain it from the inventors for the cheap value of US$1.99 (£1.20).

The prayers of the helplessly sarcastic are answered!

Sarcasm is rising. And we’re not being sarky.

With the spoken phrase, we use our tone, inflection and quantity to query, exclaim and convey our emotions.  The written phrase has query marks and exclamation factors to doc these ideas, however sarcasm has for too lengthy had nothing to indicate it!

And in at the moment’s world with growing commentary, debate and rhetoric, what higher time might there be to make sure that no sarcastic message, remark or opinion is left behind un-understood?

The SarcMark was meant to be of roughly the identical measurement as present glyphs, and included a degree due to its presence in different terminal punctuation marks such because the query mark and exclamation level.

Fascinatingly, in sure Ethiopic languages, sarcasm and unreal phrases are indicated on the finish of a sentence with a sarcasm mark referred to as temherte slaq, a personality that appears like an inverted exclamation level ¡.  The utilization immediately parallels John Wilkins‘ 1668 proposal to make use of the inverted exclamation level as an irony mark.   However a proposal by Asteraye Tsigie and Daniel Yacob in 1999 to incorporate the temherte slaq in unicode – the world commonplace for textual content and emojis – was unsuccessful.

It’s now very acceptable in Spanish to start a sentence with a gap inverted exclamation mark (“¡”) and finish it with a query mark (“?”), or vice versa, for statements which can be questions but additionally have a transparent sense of exclamation or shock akin to: ¡Y tú quién te crees? – “And who do you suppose you might be?!”

Usually, 4 indicators are used, thusly: ¡¿Y tú quién te crees?!

However you’re a Buddhist? Oh expensive.

Bucking the fashionable development, the Buddhist monk Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu has recognized sarcasm as opposite to proper speech, a facet of the Noble Eightfold Path resulting in the top of struggling.

He opines that sarcasm is an unskillful and unwholesome methodology of humor, which he contrasts with an strategy primarily based on frankly highlighting the ironies inherent in life.

Or as my Mom-in-law used to say “Sarcasm is the bottom type of wit.” Which it generally could also be, however we nonetheless want to know when it’s getting used, can we not?

Sarcasm isn’t all that liked in psychology, both

Professionals in psychology and associated fields have lengthy seemed upon sarcasm negatively, ^{notably noting that sarcasm tends to be a maladaptive coping mechanism for these with unresolved anger or frustrations.}

Psychologist Clifford N. Lazarus describes sarcasm as “hostility disguised as humor”. And whereas an occasional sarcastic remark might enliven a dialog, Lazarus means that too frequent use of sarcasm tends to “overwhelm the emotional taste of any dialog”. A bit like an excessive amount of salt in a dish.

Understanding the subtlety of this utilization requires second-order interpretation of the speaker’s or author’s intentions; totally different components of the mind should work collectively to know sarcasm. This refined understanding will be missing in some individuals with sure types of mind injury, dementia and generally autism, and this notion has been positioned by MRI in the appropriate parahippocampal gyrus. Giant numbers of individuals merely don’t get sarcasm.

Why do some individuals simply not perceive sarcasm?

Analysis on the anatomy of sarcasm has proven, in line with Richard Delmonico, a neuropsychologist at College of California, Davis, that individuals with injury within the prefrontal cortex have problem understanding non-verbal facets of language like tone.  Neuroscientist David Salmon on the College of California, San Diego, acknowledged that this kind of analysis might assist medical doctors distinguish between various kinds of neurodegenerative illnesses, akin to frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s illness.

Which suggests it makes extra sense than ever to obviously denote sarcasm within the written phrase, if you’d like your sarcasm to be understood.

Want a SarcMark in your gadget?

¿ and ¡ can be found in all keyboard layouts for Spanish-speaking nations. Good telephones usually provide these when you maintain down ? or ! within the on-screen keyboard. Auto-correct will usually flip a standard mark typed initially of a sentence to the inverted one.  On methods with an AltGr key (precise or emulated through proper Alt key) and Prolonged ( or ‘Worldwide’) keyboard mapping set, the symbols will be accessed immediately, although the sequence varies by OS and locality: for instance on Home windows and US-Worldwide, use AltGr+1 and AltGr+/; on Chrome OS with UK-Prolonged, use AltGr+⇧ Shift+1 and AltGr+⇧ Shift+-.

In fact, the place sarcasm actually turns into essential is within the realm of political satire. One solely has to recall the eviscerating satire of individuals in Britain like David Frost, Monty Python or Peter Prepare dinner and Dudley Moore or in America like Dorothy Parker, Tom Lehrer, Jon Stewart or the workforce at Saturday Night time Stay to know how central satire is to our world. Puncturing pomposity and exposing cant is a crucial a part of a profitable civil society. Subvert the dominant paradigm!

Anyway, in case you are in any respect enthusiastic about some analysis about how influential satire is in at the moment’s tv discuss reveals and in our media at the moment then take heed to this fabulous podcast by Malcolm Gladwell – I like to recommend it extremely.   https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-historical past/the-satire-paradox.

Revisionist Historical past is a superb podcast.

And thanks each a lot for studying this far. No, that’s not sarcastic – I imply it!

Jen

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