Forgive me if I’m a little skeptical

Punctuation is important. It can change the meaning of simple phrases, and is especially important these days, when so many more people are communicating via text, whether it be SMS, email, online forums, or blogs.  A famous example is the difference between “a woman without her man is nothing” and “a woman: without her, man is nothing“.

I do have an affection for the combination question and exclamation mark, the interrobang (‽), and I’ve already talked about outdated (but useful) characters like the thorn (Þ).  People are frequently using combinations of punctuation to form emoticons to express the intention of their messages, so maybe there is a need for new symbols to clarify meaning.

So, what would you pay for a revolutionary piece of punctuation?  What is the use of a single punctuation mark worth?  According to the people at SarcMark, it’s worth about 2 US dollars.  They have developed a new mark to indicate sarcasm (see above), and want to charge people to use it.  I can understand that this might actually be useful in this day and age, but the fact that you would then have to explain it to everybody you sent it to, and that they wouldn’t be able to use it until they’d purchased it, makes it seem a little too much effort for not much reward.

I think I may be too skeptical for the SarcMark.  How about you?

Thanks to Dave at Languagetrainers.com for the link.