Apr 19, 2010

Geoff Nunberg Opposes Special Punctuation for Sarcasm

From The Montreal Gazette

A punctuation mark for sarcasm? How have we lived without it

By Mike Barber

Like climate change and world hunger, sarcasm is clearly one of today's most pressing issues.

So much so that the powers of the Internet have been harnessed to create a punctuation mark intended to show when a sentence is sarcastic. A Michigan father-and-son team have launched a campaign to get the SarcMark - think of an upside-down "@" with a period in the middle - into emails, text messages, tweets, and Facebook posts the world over....

Geoffrey Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at University of California at Berkeley [School of Information] and a chair of the American Heritage Dictionary's usage panel, says the SarcMark won't be showing up in any of his emails any time soon.

"The point of sarcasm is that it speaks with two voices," said Nunberg.

"To the non-initiate, it's literal, and the initiate hears it as sarcastic, and the whole point is not to tip that balance."

"(Sarcasm) is an ambient sensibility," he said. "You shouldn't have to mark it.

Read more...

This story also appeared in:

Last updated:

October 4, 2016