>>
>> I think you'll find that's italics, not irony, used to indicate a quotation... Google doesn't
>> show up any obvious hits for a convention of using italics to indicate irony.
>>
There has been an attempt to popularise a new "backwards italics" called "ironics", to indicate irony, but it never caught on.
The paradox is that once you have to explain irony, it ceases to be ironic. Irony is something you detect, reading between the lines and applying a sixth sense. The best irony is deliberately pitched so that 90% of people do not notice it, but it raises a chuckle from those who do.
|