A tone indicator or tone tag is a symbol attached to a sentence or message sent in a textual form, such as over the

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, to explicitly state the intonation or intent of the message, especially when it may be otherwise ambiguous. Tone indicators start with a forward slash (/), followed by a short series of letters, usually a shortening of another word. Examples include /j, meaning "joking"; /srs, meaning "serious"; or /s, meaning "sarcastic".

History

Early attempts to create tone indicators stemmed from the difficulty of denoting

irony Irony, in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what, on the surface, appears to be the case with what is actually or expected to be the case. Originally a rhetorical device and literary technique, in modernity, modern times irony has a ...

in print media, and so several irony punctuation marks were proposed. The '' percontation point'' (⸮; a reversed question mark) was proposed by Henry Denham in the 1580s to denote a rhetorical question, but usage died out by the 1700s. In 1668,

John Wilkins John Wilkins (14 February 1614 – 19 November 1672) was an English Anglican ministry, Anglican clergyman, Natural philosophy, natural philosopher, and author, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1 ...

proposed the ''

irony mark Irony punctuation is any form of notation proposed or used to denote irony or sarcasm in written text. Written text, in English language, English and other languages, lacks a standard way to mark irony, and several forms of punctuation have be ...

'', using an inverted exclamation mark (¡) to denote an ironic statement. Various other punctuation marks were proposed over the following centuries to denote irony, but none gained popular usage. In 1982, the

emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...

was created to be used to denote jokes (with :-)) or things that are not jokes (with :-(). The syntax of modern tone indicators stems from '' /s'', which has long been used on the internet to denote

sarcasm Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflectio ...

. This symbol is an abbreviated version of the earlier /sarcasm, itself a simplification of </sarcasm>, the form of a humorous

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

closing tag marking the end of a "sarcasm" block, and therefore placed at the end of a sarcastic passage.

Internet usage

On the

, one or more tone indicators may be placed at the end of a message. A tone indicator on the internet often takes the form of a

forward slash The slash is a slanting line punctuation mark . It is also known as a stroke, a solidus, a forward slash and several other historical or technical names. Once used as the equivalent of the modern period and comma, the slash is now used to r ...

(/) followed by an abbreviation of a relevant adjective; alternatively, a more detailed textual description (e. g., / friendly, caring about your well-being) may be used. For example, /srs may be attached to the end of a message to indicate that the message is meant to be interpreted in a serious manner, as opposed to, for example, being a

joke A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, ...

(which is commonly represented as /j). Tone indicators are used to explicitly state the author's intent, instead of leaving the message up to interpretation.

References

{{reflist Internet terminology

History

Internet usage

See also

References