The irony mark or irony point (⸮) (French: point d’ironie) is a punctuation mark proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm (alias Marcel Bernhardt) at the end of the 19th century used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level (irony, sarcasm, etc.). It is illustrated by a small, elevated, backward-facing question mark.[2] The same mark was used earlier by Marcellin Jobard in an article dated June 11, 1841, and commented in an 1842 report.[5]
It was in turn taken by Hervé Bazin in his 1966 essay Plumons l’Oiseau ("Let's pluck the bird"), where the author, however, used another (ψ-like) shape.[6]In the same work, the author proposed five other innovative punctuation marks: the "doubt point" (
), "certitude point" (
), "acclamation point" (
), "authority point" (
), and "love point" (
).[7]
In March 2007, the Dutch foundation CPNB (Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek) presented another design of an irony mark (
).