irony punctuation marks

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Thu Aug 2 13:51:16 UTC 2012


On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 9:10 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> The first I've heard of this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation .
>
> It can't be a put-on, because there's no IPM at the end.

This has come up on Language Log from time to time:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004523.html
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2052

And see Erin McKean's 2010 Boston Globe column on the subject:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02/07/yeah_right/

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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