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View Full Version : What could be done with the new <sarcasm> tag in HTML 5?


diablo75
June 14th, 2009, 02:56 AM
So I first saw this image (http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/5350/w3ctwitter7998492.png) via reddit or digg or something not long ago, and I was kind of intrigued to read into it's intended purpose some more. I found an article about the <sarcasm> tag that suggested its primary purpose was to allow for computers (and humans second) to be able to tell when people are being sarcastic when writing so that such statements won't be taken as litteraly.

But then it kind of got me thinking... how might text be altered in a way to indicate to a human that something is being written/said sarcastically without having those bracketed <sarcasm> </sarcasm> tags?

So here's my idea... and this is probably a dumb one.

Reverse-italicized text. As far as I know, all italicized text leans to the right. What if it leaned to the left instead for sarcastic statements? Or has some other rarity of the English language already claimed this?
jbruced
June 14th, 2009, 02:59 AM
<sarcasm> great idea </sarcasm>

Didn't work :-)
TheNosh
June 14th, 2009, 03:12 AM
that will take i while to be generally understood, but it's not a bad idea
kmg90
June 14th, 2009, 03:16 AM
Thats a great idea but you need to find a way to display it like what would the content inside the tags look :-k
JordyD
June 14th, 2009, 03:20 AM
<sarcasm> great idea </sarcasm>

Didn't work :-)

No, no, see you have to use BB code... :)

Anyways, if you had left-leaning text, wouldn't you have to create new character sets? I don't think italicised fonts are italicised by shifting pixels. Am I wrong?

In the meanwhile, we can use <span> plus IDs and CSS.
TheNosh
June 14th, 2009, 04:59 AM
if you had left-leaning text, wouldn't you have to create new character sets? I don't think italicised fonts are italicised by shifting pixels. Am I wrong?

i hadn't thought of that, but come to think of it you're right
MikeTheC
June 14th, 2009, 06:49 AM
No, no, see you have to use BB code... :)
See, now that comes up perfectly obviously on my computer and I can clearly discern you're being sarcastic.

So... rock on, HTML 5!!!
MikeTheC
June 14th, 2009, 06:51 AM
i hadn't thought of that, but come to think of it you're right

No, left. Get it right. Er, left, I mean...
Mr. Picklesworth
June 14th, 2009, 07:09 AM
Either this thread is an epic meta-fail, or you've all out-sarcasmed me.