Ah, sarcasm. It’s a guilty pleasure few of us would likely admit we enjoy, but have almost certainly employed at one point or another. It’s a verbal catharsis, a momentary sour-lemon bitterness, a passing scorn to ease a flare of frustration or score a stinging humorous point. In my work as a software developer, I’ve joked with friends about how useful a sarcasm HTML tag would be, akin to the tags that enable us to display online text as bold or italic or underlined. I’ve also heard people pine for a “sarcasm font,” some typeface that would effectively convey a healthy dose of verbal irony. There’s even a fully realized punctuation mark, the SarcMark, available for download and perfect for anyone concerned that the irony of their text might not come across sufficiently to a recipient. Just tack this little mark onto the end of your sarcastic sentences like a little dry wit flag and voila, no more embarrassing apologies for misunderstood missives! Continue reading “The software that sniffs out sarcasm”