Talk:Irony punctuation

Interrobang‽

The 4th example image is wrong -- it is clearly an interrobang.

To add to article

To add to this article: mention of the sarcastrophe (^), used to surround phrases uttered in an ironic fashion. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 03:15, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd never heard of these, but I stumbled across some mentions of them in sources and put them on the page. So, done! Dingolover6969 (talk) 09:35, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Reverse italics?

Is there a way to actually reverse italics? Because, I've wanted that feature since forever, but not necessarily to indicate sarcasm. -- sion8 ^{Contributions | Tᴀʟᴋ ᴘᴀɢᴇ} 18:26, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

The simplest way to do it is to use a reverse italic typeface. In some desktop publishing programs, you can visually mimic reverse italics using shear or skew on the characters.—Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 13:26, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

The end of an era — time to merge "Percontation point" into Question mark?

This article now has a fairly detailed section on "Percontation point" — although I don't think that would stand on its own as an article instead of a subtopic.

Anyway, I think this page covers ⸮ and ؟ merely because, long ago when this page was only about , those symbols were typographical approximations for it. I think this based on reading random points in the page history. Here is another cool image from that era, although the last mark is original contribution so we couldn't cover it on the page:

I think ⸮ would be better covered as a variant on the page Question mark. We give a strained interpretation that sometimes rhetorical questions are ironic, but I see no reason to keep treating this subject on this page instead of moving it to the other page and giving it a one-line mention here. Dingolover6969 (talk) 11:03, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm going to boldly do this now, without waiting longer, because it will make fixing redirects easier for certain things if I don't have to do it twice! Also, I have grown more confident that this is the right move. Dingolover6969 (talk) 10:30, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Yep, that's done. Man, it's so weird that a decade of Wikipedians were under the mistaken impression that ⸮ was some kind of irony point — as you can see on talk pages, redirects, etc... Dingolover6969 (talk) 11:41, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

this article should probably cover the snark mark

It's just some guy's wacky proposal but hey that's literally everything on this page.

There are a number of RSes treating the topic. I guess they didn't have anything better to do at the time.

I think there used to be coverage of the snark mark on this page (there are even redirects to here from the term) but it got removed... adding it back in will probably be easier than writing it from scratch. Dingolover6969 (talk) 14:16, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Done. There are more RSes (and Rer Ses) that covered it back in the day than I cited on the page, but I didn't bother to dig any more up. If someone wants to establish more notability (about this already niche-of-a-niche topic) you'll probably be able to find them online. I also sent that redirect I mentioned to a vanchor. Dingolover6969 (talk) 09:35, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Fancy version of the Jobard mark

This article currently uses an html construction and a screenshot to inline represent the Jobard mark, since there is no suitable unicode character for it (as far as we so far know, at least). Those are alright, but what would really suit the page is someone making a svg recreation of the mark, like has been done for the other marks. I'm afraid I'm not good enough at inkscape to have the time to do this well. So, I just mention it here. Dingolover6969 (talk) 04:38, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Rounded or straight corners? I'll upload sometime in the next 24h ~ oklopfer (💬) 05:53, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Hmm... well, looking at the blurry, blurry picture, I guess those corners look straight to me. So, straight I suppose! Dingolover6969 (talk) 09:32, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

@Dingolover6969 I ended up doing both:

• Smooth
• Sharp

These are at 16px size, seems ~10px size is approximately how it appears in Jobard:

Word

Word ~ oklopfer (💬) 00:57, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Great job! Thanks :) Dingolover6969 (talk) 04:07, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

FYI I just resized them a bit so they will render slightly better at smaller sizes, now 8px might be the sweet spot:

Les sillons

Ce qui

Let me know if you think I should try to get them even higher than the baseline, should just need some canvas resizing ~ oklopfer (💬) 04:33, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Ah, nice!

Yeah, judging by the picture I think they are supposed to be a little higher. I had to put this into paint.net and overlay some straight lines to confirm, but the bottom of the triangle seems to terminate at the straight line in the e (whatever the technical term for that is), which is a little higher than what we have now as I write this e e.Dingolover6969 (talk) 05:17, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Side note: There is also the confusing fact that the footnote explaining the irony mark puts it at a completely different place relative to the type, apparently with the bottom of the triangle resting on the typographic baseline now — but, since overlaying them in paint.net those glpyhs seem to be of identical size, I assume this is because he only made/had one set of metal sorts of one font size of his new symbol and thus in the (smaller-type) footnote he couldn't line it up with the text right; and therefore we can just ignore that technical limitation. I also considered that maybe the normal usage of the symbol is superscript and the footnote shows a non-superscript version of it, but I don't think that makes visual sense either so I think the theory I just explained (which means we can ignore this anomaly) is more likely. Dingolover6969 (talk) 06:02, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

I noticed that too, but also figured it was more meant to be representative than how it is used elsewhere. I also would call it an anomaly. Anyway, I updated the images again, should be all good now!

As another tangential side note, it doesn't seem like there is a strict technical term for the height line of ⟨e⟩'s crossbar (or alternatively, approx. the middle of ⟨x⟩). The midline (or alternatively median, mean line, waistline) is the top of lowercase letters, and x-height is the distance between the baseline and midline, so I guess the closest we can get is something like "1/2 x-height line" or "median-median"/"mid-midline"? ~ oklopfer (💬) 06:12, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Very nice, thank you! Dingolover6969 (talk) 06:25, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

"Zing (punctuation)" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Zing (punctuation) has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 April 7 § Zing (punctuation) until a consensus is reached. Dingolover6969 (talk) 09:46, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

"Ironicon" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Ironicon has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 April 7 § Ironicon until a consensus is reached. Dingolover6969 (talk) 10:24, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Nb: Unused, unattested term for irony punctuation. Although it is a quite nice word — akin to obscenicon. Dingolover6969 (talk) 10:27, 7 April 2026 (UTC)