A look says more than a thousand words.

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True, because expressing yourself in words is very difficult. And I donx92t mean a poem or a serenade under your balcony, but a letter.

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And with all those chat logs and text messaging these days, we communicate a lot more by x91lettersx92. Therefore, we found a lot more new ways to express ourselves.

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For example; how do you know if someone is laughing at your joke, when youx92re on MSN? Easy, the other one starts sending things like x91LOLx92 or x91LMAOx92, thus we can conclude he or she is banging her head on the keyboard with laughter.

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And if you want to x91shoutx92 during the conversation, you press Caps Lock when you write. Not that the computer of your friend will start screaming your message, but the idea works for most.

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But when I got introduced to the wonderful world of MSN, I soon realised my favourite expression started to suffer under the electronic communication device.

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x93Ix92m busy skydiving.x94

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x93With your laptop?x94

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x93x85 I meant that sarcastic.x94

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x93Oh…x94

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Damnit, no one understands me! I say things that make absolutely no sense, that would send people rolling over the floor with laughter in real life, but the MSN just f*cks it up!

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Being sarcastic, ironic or cynical is so much more difficult on the internet. I do my best here on this weblog, but itx92s hard work, people!! Cyber-humour is problematic!

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A joke is easy to recognize, but how do you know Ix92m being sarcastic without my typical x91Ix92m being sarcastic, you dimwitx92-face??

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And thatx92s where this yearx92s boekenweek (bookweek) comes in.

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Theyx92ve invented the irony-mark.

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Itx92s a punctuation mark that expresses irony. No kidding! You can download it from the website!

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Itx92s like a exclamation mark (!) with a Harry Potter-scar combined. They frickx92n thought about it. There have been studies.

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I bet the chairman of that group is a JK Rowling-fan.

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And now comes the silliest thing: there already was an irony mark.

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Wiki says so, go look it up. It was invented by some Frenchman (okay, one reason to ignore the guy) named Alcanter de Brahm (silly name; reason number two) who proposed the mark at the end of the 19^th century. Only two other writers used it after him, and they were both French, so Ix92m not going to spill anymore writing space on them.

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The mark was a question mark, but then backwards. That looks silly, people. I thought the Spanish upside-down-question mark was a strange sight, but backwards ainx92t any fun either.

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So, maybe itx92s a good thing after all, inventing a new one. Although I wonder if itx92ll last, if we look at former attempts. But we can always give it a try.

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At least this one isn’t invented by a Frenchman^

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Nope. Definitely not working for me.

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-xxx- Noor

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