The [sarcasm] / [/sarcasm] Tag

News Type: Other — Tue Jul 25, 2006 1:27 PM EDT

technology, internet, newsvine, language, english, ideas, css, html, xhtml, sarcasm, semantics, w3c, sml

Josh of Arc

Live Poll

Should Newsvine Consider Ways of Implementing a "Sarcasm" Indicator?

Yes
61%
No
17%
Why bother? Everyone understands ME perfectly!
22%

Total Votes: 23

Look! Sarcasm!

I wrote an article some time ago for (the sadly now defunct) Plastic.com about How Flame Wars Ignite. The gist of the article had to do with a study by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that illuminated the cause of flame wars on the Internet to be largely caused by several contradictory conditions of folks who had read any piece of email:

That the reader only had a 50-50 chance of correctly ascertaining the tone of the message
That the reader incorrectly believes he or she had correctly interpreted the message's tone 90% of the time
That the sender of the mail incorrectly predicted the recipients of the mail would understand its tone 80% of the time

Especially on blogging sites such as this, there is a desperate need for a family of semantic markup tags that can assist in conveying tone and intention.

Cynicism in writing works best when delivered as a factual statement. Because effective use of sarcasm requires its reader understand that the writer is intending to be sarcastic, however, the most urgently needed semantic tag is one to visually indicate sarcasm (visually, I've envisioned left-leaning italics representing a sarcastic tone). Ultimately, the W3C needs to add semantic tags for a lot of things (sarcasm, lyrics, blogs, etc.). Until this happens, though, I've been thinking about ways in which sarcasm can be indicated. What makes the most sense is to define sarcasm as a CSS class.

My thought is to be able to indicate a sarcasm within a span:

< span class="sarcasm" >It's all Bush's fault. < /span >

Visually, sarcasm could be displayed perhaps as a combination of deprecated tags (e.g., blink combined with underline). Being between domains at the moment, I have not had the opportunity to play with defining a sarcasm class. D other folks on newsvine have ideas, insight , or suggestions for defining sarcasm?

And, more importantly, is there any chance the Newsvine staff might be willing to implement a workable way of defining sarcasm?

23 Votes
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Public Discussion (11)

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4.9

3.3

1.1

{"commentId":220601,"authorDomain":"brianford"}

Brian Ford

I've said it before but: If I had a dollar for every time I was told I didn't have a sense of humor on Newsvine -- I'd not be excited about and eagerly anticipating ad revenue details.

I think people forget that sarcasm -usually- requires some sort of personal understanding of the commenter laying out the sarcasm in order to be fully appreciated. (Or even to be recognized as sarcasm.)

So yes - some type of indicator would be nice.

{"commentId":220601,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"brianford"}

5 votes

#1 - Tue Jul 25, 2006 5:03 PM EDT

{"commentId":220732,"authorDomain":"stolte-sawa"}

Ryan Stolte-Sawa

Thanks for writing. Even a different colour would work...blinking could get obnoxious. ^^

{"commentId":220732,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"stolte-sawa"}

2 votes

#2 - Tue Jul 25, 2006 6:50 PM EDT

{"commentId":221005,"authorDomain":"ciotog"}

ciotog

I haven't seen anyone using the MARQUEE tag for ages ... that could be more fun than blinking :)

{"commentId":221005,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"ciotog"}

1 vote

#2.1 - Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:12 AM EDT

{"commentId":221476,"authorDomain":"stolte-sawa"}

Ryan Stolte-Sawa

I think confetti really takes the cake for tex effex.

{"commentId":221476,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"stolte-sawa"}

#2.2 - Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:39 AM EDT

{"commentId":221528,"authorDomain":"josh-of-arc"}

Josh of Arc

I haven't seen anyone using the MARQUEE tag for ages ... that could be more fun than blinking :)

You have not seen it because the MARQUEE tag is deprecated. Also, I didn't explain my comment about using BLINK (as ugly as it is) in full. While BLINK is also deprecated as a tag, it is still a valid CSS equivalence (although it does not work in IE): {text-decoration: blink;}

- J

{"commentId":221528,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"josh-of-arc"}

1 vote

#2.3 - Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:13 AM EDT

{"commentId":221792,"authorDomain":"stolte-sawa"}

Ryan Stolte-Sawa

...just jokin' around, Josh. :)

{"commentId":221792,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"stolte-sawa"}

#2.4 - Wed Jul 26, 2006 1:42 PM EDT

{"commentId":221864,"authorDomain":"stevetherobot"}

stevetherobot

Even a different colour would work

What color is sarcasm? And how does it taste?

{"commentId":221864,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"stevetherobot"}

2 votes

#2.5 - Wed Jul 26, 2006 2:21 PM EDT

{"commentId":222110,"authorDomain":"stolte-sawa"}

Ryan Stolte-Sawa

Pink. It tastes like candy floss.

{"commentId":222110,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"stolte-sawa"}

1 vote

#2.6 - Wed Jul 26, 2006 4:34 PM EDT

{"commentId":221375,"authorDomain":"sstringer"}

sstringer

What? Friendly emoticons aren't doing it for you? ;-)

(If 50% of folks misinterpret that, then God help us all.)

{"commentId":221375,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"sstringer"}

3 votes

#3 - Wed Jul 26, 2006 9:38 AM EDT

{"commentId":225868,"authorDomain":"paddy"}

Paddy Ryan

Emoticons are helpful, but a sarcasm tag would be well accepted by me anyway.

{"commentId":225868,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"paddy"}

#4 - Sat Jul 29, 2006 12:48 PM EDT

{"commentId":236876,"authorDomain":"Paradox460"}

Paradox460

I have a yellow version of the ins tag on my site for sarcasm, but it is php, so it can parse it. If that were to be added to HTML5, that would be good.

{"commentId":236876,"threadId":"31204","contentId":"299923","authorDomain":"Paradox460"}

2 votes

#5 - Sat Aug 5, 2006 12:33 AM EDT

{"canLink":false,"threadId":"31204","isPrivate":false}

JOSH OF ARC

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