Tone indicator


A tone indicator, also called a tone tag, is a shorthand symbol or abbreviation that conveys the intended tone, intent or emotional context of a written message that might otherwise be ambiguous. In essence, it is a form of meta‑communication: a cue that supplements the literal text with guidance on how the message should be interpreted.
Tone indicators are typically represented by a forward slash followed by a few letters, such as /j for "joking" or /gen for "genuine". They are most often placed at the end of a sentence and are especially common in casual online communication.
Because written communication lacks the nonverbal cues of face‑to‑face interaction – such as vocal inflection, facial expressions, and body language – tone indicators serve as their textual substitutes to reduce misinterpretation. They are particularly common among the neurodivergent community, who often struggle to understand tone.

History

Early attempts to create tone indicators stemmed from the difficulty of denoting irony in print media, and so several irony punctuation marks were proposed. The percontation point was proposed by Henry Denham in the 1580s to denote a rhetorical question, but usage died out by the 1700s.
In 1668, John Wilkins proposed the irony mark, 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 was created to be used to denote jokes or things that are not jokes.
The syntax of modern tone indicators stems from /s, which has long been used on the Internet to denote sarcasm. This symbol is an abbreviated version of the earlier /sarcasm, itself a simplification of </sarcasm>, the form of a humorous XML closing tag marking the end of a "sarcasm" block, and therefore placed at the end of a sarcastic passage.

Internet usage

On the Internet, 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 followed by an abbreviation of a relevant adjective; alternatively, a more detailed textual description 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. Tone indicators are used to explicitly state the author's intent, instead of leaving the message up to interpretation.
AbbreviationMeaningDescription
/ffakeUsed to denote when a statement is fake.
/gen, /g or /genqgenuine; genuine questionUsed to denote genuineness, whether in a phrase or question.
/hjhalf-jokingUsed to denote a half-joke; when one is joking about only some of the statement.
/hyphyperboleUsed to denote hyperboles.
/jjokingUsed to denote jokes.
/l or /lylyricUsed to denote lyrics.
/lhlightheartedUsed to denote lightheartedness and cheerfulness; often used on insults to clarify that they are intended to be playful rather than malicious.
/liliteralUsed to denote when a statement is literal or to be taken literally.
/mmetaphorUsed to denote when a statement is a metaphor.
/negnegative connotationUsed to denote when a statement has a negative connotation.
/nmnot madUsed to denote when the speaker is not mad; usually for statements that could be interpreted as angry.
/nsxnon-sexual intentUsed to denote statements with non-sexual intent.
/pplatonicUsed to denote platonic statements.
/rromanticUsed to denote romantic statements.
/rhrhetoricalUsed to denote rhetorical statements.
/ssarcasmUsed to denote sarcasm.
/srsseriousUsed to denote seriousness.
/tteasingUsed to denote teasing.
/ththreatUsed to denote a threat.
/xsexual intentUsed to denote statements with sexual intent.