Ah, just what I’ve always wanted – a punctuation mark for sarcasm!
Yep, those of you who have mastered the art can now make it totally clear when you’re being sarcastic in writing. The invention of American company Sarcasm, Inc. (interesting, since arguably the British are masters of the sarcastic comment), the SarcMarc can be downloaded for US$1.99 and is available for Windows, Mac and Blackberry products.
Want to know how to spot when you’ve been sarc’ed? Look out for something like an upside-down bass clef (see the picture above).
What’s an interrobang? It’s a nonstandard English punctuation mark that combines the exclamation mark (!) and the question mark (?).
When you’re asking a question that’s also an exclamation (or vice versa), you would normally place both exclamation and question marks at the end – “What is that?!” for example. With the interrobang however, you get both in one.
This clever idea was thought up in 1962 by American ad agency director Martin K. Speckter, although it’s never become part of standard English punctuation. I certainly have never seen it written anywhere. The name comes from the Latin for “query” (interrogatio) and printer jargon for the exclamation mark (bang).
It’s easy enough to handwrite, although in my writing it comes out looking more like a poorly scribed question mark. If you’re typing, MS Word has the symbol in Wingdings, and some word processors support it with the shortcut Alt+8253.
I am happy to admit that I am occasionally confused by apostrophes, something I attribute to spending my formative years at schools where calligraphy with the headteacher was sometimes more important than grammar.
Anyway, now that I’m all grown up and like to see writing that is grammatically correct, I’ve been working hard to make sure I always put the apostrophe in the right place. Apostrophes have two uses, and one of them I am fine with: showing the omission of letters (e.g. “it’s”/”it is”). It’s the other that I, and probably most others, stumble over.
The other use of the apostrophe is to show possession (“the girl’s pen”). The most useful (although a little childlike!) way I have found for remembering the correct grammar is thinking of the tail of the apostrophe pointing to whoever has ownership. So:
The pen of the girl = the girl’s pen. There is only one girl, so the apostrophe is pointing to the word ‘girl’.
The pen of the girls (more than one girl) = the girls’ pen. There is more than one girl, so the apostrophe is pointing to the plural of girl, ‘girls’.
Try testing your apostrophe knowledge here.
