Add A Sarcasm Mark to That Email

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - Have you ever wanted to send an email or document with a little sarcasm, but didn't want to risk being misunderstood? The solution to this very real problem was announced through a press release Tuesday: Enter the sarcasm mark or "SarcMark," available under for $2.

Sarcasm Inc. of Washington Township, Mich., has released software for computer systems and Blackberry devices that can be downloaded for $1.99. The software provides a mark that looks like an open circle with a dot in the center; or an upside down "g" or "@" symbol. UPI posted a image of the mark .

The company Web site states the reason they developed the sarcasm mark was that "the written word has question marks and exclamation points to document those thoughts, BUT sarcasm has NOTHING!"

Paul Sak, of Sarcasm, explained in an email that the company is serious about the mark. "The SarcMark is a punctuation mark, designed with that in mind," wrote Sak. "It is roughly the size of other characters and with the SarcMark font downloaded, it behaves like any other font character. It specifically has a point or period incorporated in it, just like all other main punctuation marks: question mark ?, exclamation point !, colon :, semi-colon ; and of course the period."

Sak also said that the mark could be used in Closed Captioning for the deaf or the "crawl" messages that scroll at the bottom of TV broadcasts.

The company said putting the SarcMark after an online statement will give the reader visual confirmation that the statement he or she is reading, is, in fact, sarcastic, reported ComputerWorld UK .

There have been a few previous calls for such a mark. The irony mark or irony point is a mark that was suggested to be used to indicate that a sentence has a second meaning, like in an ironic or sarcastic sense. According to Wikipedia the mark has never been used widely.

And in a 2004 Slate article Josh Greenman proposed the creation of the "sarcasm point." He wrote that it was time for the adoption of the sarcasm point because of the "range of sincerity can shoot from earnest to irreverent in nanoseconds" in today's world.

The company posted this commercial to YouTube: