2007-05-21

Cool New Punctuations

We all learned about punctuation marks in school, I hope. Punctuation marks such as the full stop to end a sentence. The comma to provide a little pause within a sentence, and help you digest what was said. The question mark to ask a question, such as where do I use a question mark? Exclamation mark! for indicating a strong feeling or higher volume when read aloud. I just learnt about two punctuation marks that I feel can be very useful and appropriate for a multitude of sentences.

Introducing:

‽ The Interrobang. The Interrobang combines an exclamation mark with a question mark, A sentence ending with an interrobang either asks a question in an excited manner or expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question. This would be equivalent to having a WTF at the end or beginning of a sentence but in a more refined eloquent way.

The Irony mark (؟) (French: point d’ironie) is a punctuation mark that purports to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level. It is illustrated by a backward-facing question mark. An irony mark may sometimes be referred to as an irony point, snark or zing. Its usage is extremely rare but I feel it could be very useful.

Sentences that you could use the irony mark in could be:

Life is short, then you die ؟

or, If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular؟


There are other punctuation marks that are underused but the Interrobang and Irony mark I find very appealing. Forget the LOL, BRB, WTF, ROFL,LMAO, and assorted smileys symbols and abbreviations that crept into the English language and use these instead to sound eloquent and kash5a :-)

3 comments:

  1. I'm learning spanish, and I found a new panctuation that I have never seen before in the english language.. it's the inverted question mark (¿), I thought it was interesting to mention..

    ReplyDelete
  2. I could learn to love the point d'ironie!

    "If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular" *dying laughing*؟

    ReplyDelete
  3. don: cool, what is it used for ?

    intlxpatr: I like them both, I like them so much I am thinking of making T shirts out of them, especially the interrobang.

    ReplyDelete