I thought the librarians among us might like to see this, if they haven't already run across it.
It came to my attention via Neil Gaiman's blog.

But what's all this about "Ethiopian languages that actually have a written sarcasm mark"? It's called Temherte Slaq and it's "used to indicate an unreal phrase, often sarcastical in editorial cartoons. Temherte Slaq is also important in children‘s literature and in poetic use. Debate is needed among Ethiopian scholars to determine if inverted exclamation mark is acceptable."

It's something somebody has told Neil Gaiman from the look of it. I have no idea whether it's true or not (though I'm sure others here will be able to tell me.)

Actually I can see no intrinsic reason why some language somewhere wouldn't have a way of marking sarcasm in writing. After we mark it with tone in speaking. We could easily devise a particular typographical way of marking it.

Of course maybe no language ever has but ethnologue lists 85 living languages for Ethiopia so maybe some of them do mark sarcasm in some way.

Your post seems to have lengthened since I started to type my response to it. Thanks for the very interesting link.

Excellent links. I think a sarcastic mark would be a great addition to our punctuation of English! However, in posts, the little icons work quite well, too.

I adore Neil Gaiman's writing, both his books and his blog. I love his tweets, too, and I wish I could be his friend.

He's right, and Kalleh is right, too - we definitely need sarcasm remarks (like I really care if you know I'm being sarcastic).

And I'll also weigh in on the banned books letter thing. First, this librarian writes a good, if long letter. I'd edit it down to about 1/3 the length (does he really think the irate, closed-minded customer is going to read that whole thing?), and I'd probably not try so hard to educate quite so much and would stick closer to the salient facts. This is in picture book format and therefore is a book for children. We are a public library and strive to have materials to meet the needs of many different points of view, and we encourage parents to monitor and discuss book selections with their children. Blah Blah Blah . .. or maybe just Blah Blah in the interest of being succinct.

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