24 November 2008

How did I live without this?

Wikipedia offers me new punctuation: the irony mark.
This mark was proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm (alias Marcel Bernhardt) at the end of the 19th century. It was in turn taken by Hervé Bazin in his book Plumons l’Oiseau (1966), in which the author proposes several other innovative punctuation marks, such as the doubt point (), certitude point (), acclamation point (), authority point (), indignation point (, essentially ¡), and love point ( or ). It was also featured in the art periodical Point d’Ironie by Agnes b. in 1997.

Its form is essentially the same as the late medieval , a percontation point (punctus percontativus), which was used to mark rhetorical questions.

1 comment:

Lydia said...

My ex Brett and I had to develop one of these for our online conversations.