Uncategorized

There was a entry on reddit recently about solving the eternal problem of making sarcastic remarks in online discussions without getting taken literally. These people feel that a new punctuation mark is in order. They’ve got the right idea, but implemented it in precisely the worst conceivable way: a piece of software you download (and pay for!) that runs on your computer, which will output the new punctuation mark when you hit Control-dot:

It’s cute, but suffers from what every geek whose read Joel Spolsky would recognize as a chicken and egg problem: no one will go to the trouble of paying for this application until the SarkMark becomes commonly used and recognizable, and it won’t become common used until everyone buys the app. Silicon Valley is littered with unloved contraptions that perished from this incurable malady.

Here’s a better way:

@

Yes, that’s right: the @ symbol. Currently used in only 2 (non-computer-programming) contexts: email addresses and expressing time and place (meet me tomorrow @ 7pm). Here are examples.

Sarcastic Statement

George: I just bought John Voight’s car!
Jerry: Doesn’t he spell his first name “Jon”?
George: What are you saying?
Jerry: Nothing. I’m sure the man just misspelled his own name.@

Sarcastic Question

Jerry: I can’t go to a bad movie by myself. What, am I gonna make sarcastic remarks to strangers?@

Sarcastic Exclamation

Jerry: This is what I like, see?@ You come home and your parents are in your bed!@

As you can see, you append the @ so that the original punctuation mark is preserved. Inventing a new mark has the disadvantage that you the meaning that would have been conveyed by the ! ? or . vanishes and as to become implicit. I chose the @ symbol because it is larger and more noticeable that a ` ~ ‘ ” ^ and other characters such as * & [ { ( might be ambiguous.

What do you think? And please, no wisecracks in the comments, I can’t take it!@

When I was doing my undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Concordia University in Montreal, there was a Russian teaching assistant called Alexei. One day during an organic chemistry lab, he told us a story that has remained tattooed on the inside of my skull ever since.

When Alexei was doing his undergraduate degree at the University of Moscow, there was one particular professor who had the bad habit of coming to class drunk some times. It was easy to tell when he was drunk: if the blackboard was covered with incomprehensible scribbles, he was fine. If he was trying hard to write legibly, he was drunk. That day, he was drunk.

The class was given in a large auditorium with 2 doors on either side. The professor was writing on the board when suddenly, the last piece of chalk broke. Just that moment, a student entered through the right door, also drunk. The professor called to him: “Young man, can you go to the other classroom and get me a piece of chalk?” The student goes back out, reappears a minute later through the left door, and says: “Excuse me, do you have an extra piece of chalk, by any chance?” The professor replied that he did not. When the student came back through the right door, he reported that he couldn’t find any chalk. The professor said “Yes, I know, one of their students just came looking for some.”