Mdtryhht

Most of us who have spent more than a few days reading things and interacting with people on the internet know how difficult it is to convey sarcasm. There is no tone there is only the words on our screens. Surely there is a way to express oneself in text in such a way that sarcasm is understood.

Here on Stack Exchange we have the use of markdown. We could put chunks of text in italics to distinguish it, but that seems less than ideal and markdown isn't available everywhere.

I've also used the <sarcasm></sarcasm> codeblock reference. But that is clunky and explicit. If you are going to be that up front you can also just say "This is sarcasm."

Then there is the simple fact that I have read plenty of sarcasm. Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams works are dripping with it. But I've never really determined why when they do it it is clear, but most others, myself included, seem to struggle with it. Is there a difference between sarcastic literature and people communicating on the internet?

What I am looking for are specific techniques for delivering sarcasm, in print, that are reasonably detectable by the average reader, as such.

In novels you can parse sarcasm because you know the characters, specifically you know what they know and how they think, so you know the difference between a serious suggestion and a flip suggestion.

I've written a sarcastic retort by a character in one of my stories, and my first reader got it immediately; because the character was making a suggestion completely out of her personality. So it had to be sarcasm, and that's how it was read and it was found funny to get a laugh (even though the character was frustrated with the stubbornness of another character).

You cannot duplicate that in an internet post except with friends that get your personality. Absent that relationship, then in that venue, you need to make your sarcastic responses a bit over the top, so they seem outlandish enough to make the reader think twice about how serious you are being.

Either that, or include a rolling-eyes emoji, if possible.