Coined words are a dime a dozen. MDJ’s hot “babefriend” (my term for a REALLY HOT girlfriend) likes to talk a lot about her “frienemy,” while my many “hipster” acquaintances enjoy blathering about how their new “fauxhawk” scored them a new “cougar” to “saddleback”.
Neologism is win.
But how often does one actually come upon a new punctuation mark?
MDJ Superstar came across this strangely puzzling website by a company called SarcMark, which seems to feel that the defining characteristic of the 21st century is irony (how very Reality Bites, don’t you think?). And it is their belief that we absolutely need a stunning new symbol to liberate us from the unbelievable heartache and injustice of ending sarcastic utterances with boring old periods or exclamation points.
It’s call a “sarcmark”, and looks like this.
Never again be misunderstood, they say on their website. Never again waste a good sarcastic line on someone who doesn’t get it!
And I totally dig that. Declarative sentences end with periods. Interrogatives end with question marks. Equal rights for sarcastic quips, I say, and end them the right way!
But here’s the curious bit. You have to pay good money to use this. $1.99 is the price they have assigned to ensuring that every last bit of deft sarcasm that you lay down on Twitter or Facebook is clearly and unfailingly understood as being less than sincere.
Personally, I find that a bit conceited on their part. It isn’t all that difficult to make sarcasm obvious – italics do the trick just fine!
A sarcmark is totally worth your $1.99.
See what I mean?
Tags: irony, neologism, Reality Bites, sarcasm, SarcMark
