Flagging ironySourced
A punctuation mark for “that was sarcasm”
In 1899 French poet Alcanter de Brahm proposed a mark to signal irony. Its shape resembled a small backward-facing question mark. It addressed a familiar written problem: readers cannot always hear the tone that the writer intended.
Punctuation was invited to explain the joke.
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Irony punctuation · Wikimedia contributors
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Reviewed: 2026-10-05