Are you a grammar nerd? Awesome! Me too. It's a pleasure to meet you.
Do you think grammar is only for nerds? Sweet! You'll still love this. I have some awesome stuff to share with you -- specifically, two new punctuation marks you've definitely wanted at some point in your life. Your English professor probably won't approve of them, hell she might not even know about them, but that doesn't make them any less useful and, to be frank, friggin cool. So now, without further ado, I present to you the most necessary punctuation marks you never knew existed - the interrobang, and the sarcasm mark.
The Interrobang
Invented in 1962 as a marketing tool, the interrobang is meant to relay an excited question, for example: this thing doesn't get used?!? The lovechild of the question mark and exclamation point is so often overlooked, despite the incredible breadth of usefulness it holds. Okay maybe "incredible breadth" is taking a step too far, but it certainly spices up what moments it can be used for. Think about it, "?!?" or "!?!" is so informal and tires my fingers out. You need to hold shift and then press three keys which are on opposite sides of the keyboard from each other. That's far too much effort for someone who will actually watch local news when the remote control is out of arms reach (me).
Practicality aside, the interrobang just looks cooler. It's my newest fall aesthetic. I'll rest my case with this question: which of the following looks cooler?
You put the umbrella IN the turkey?!?
You put the umbrella IN the turkey‽
The Sarcasm Mark
Modern communication, despite avid protests from Baby Boomers, is centered upon text. Emails, text messages, tweets, messages -- so many of our conversations take place solely through text. Yet the greatest insufficiency of each of these is the inability to denote sarcasm...or so you thought. How many times have you sent a text that a friend didn't understand was sarcastic? How many prayers have you sent to our NSA overlords, asking them to find some means to let people know what you really mean? I'd give you the number of times I have, but I'm an humanities major and can't count that high. Needless to say, I want people to know when I'm sarcastically mocking them over text. Henry Denham, an English printer, answered our prayers in 1580. That's right. We've had the ability for facetious banter for over 400 years, and nobody even knew! This is the most necessary punctuation mark for the age of the internet. Seriously. Read these and tell me you can't tell, and don't love, the difference:
Oh, totally!
Oh, totally⸮
Don't you know I never date friends?
Don't you know I never date friends⸮
So what do you think about the interrobang and the sarcasm mark? Are you going to use them? Or better yet, do you have a better way of denoting sarcasm? I'm definitely interested⸮
