humordenoting

Humordenoting is a proposed practice in linguistics and digital communication that involves explicitly marking humor in text and media to signal intent to readers and audiences. The term blends humor with notation and is used to refer to methods that indicate when a statement is meant humorously, satirically, or sarcastically, beyond conventional punctuation and tone. While not widely standardized, the concept has appeared in discussions of accessibility, cross-cultural communication, and computational humor tagging since the early 2020s.

Common approaches include inline tags such as [humor] appended to a sentence, or the use of tone indicators and emoji cues that are machine-readable or human-readable. Some proposals advocate metadata tags or markup in digital content to train natural language processing systems to recognize humor, sarcasm, or parody. In social media, existing conventions such as /j (joking) or /s (sarcasm) are cited as informal precedents for humordenoting, while others favor standardized tags embedded in content management systems or accessibility tools.

Potential benefits include improved comprehension for readers who rely on assistive technologies, better cross-cultural interpretation of humor, and enhanced data for humor-aware NLP models. By making intent explicit, humordenoting can reduce misunderstandings in multilingual or low-context settings and support moderation and content tagging workflows.

Challenges include the subjective nature of humor, regional differences in what is considered funny, and the risk of over- or under-marking content. Standardization across platforms would be difficult, and there is concern that markers could feel performative or intrusive. Adoption would likely require community consensus and clear guidelines for scope and privacy.

See also tone indicators, humor tagging, and natural language processing for humor.