There is a row going on in Edinburgh University, where students have demanded an inquiry into marking standards after a spoof essay quoting fictitious sources won glowing praise and high marks from academics.

Richard South, an undergraduate, perpetrated the hoax in a protest against what he saw as pretentious attitudes to English literature among academics. He answered the question "Is it valid to read literature historically?" by means of a pseudo-intellectual debate between two invented characters, Prof Levi Erskine-Bloom, Emeritus Dean of Scatology at Trinity College Cambridge, and his colleague, Parker J. Sprague.

The essay won South an uppersecond mark and was returned with complimentary notes.

The English department, however, claims to have understood that the essay was a joke. A senior lecturer described it as an "ironic triumph" and said that the unnamed marker "enjoyed the wit and invention of it and gave reward accordingly".

This is not accepted by South or his fellow-students, who believe the department was completely fooled and is just trying to hide its embarrassment.

It has always been easy to mock the pretentiousness of college departments of English, and the row brings up (maybe even into focus) the whole dreary business of irony, and how it can be misunderstood. Of course, no one should be allowed to lecture on English language or literature without showing that they can distinguish between sarcasm, irony, wit (dry, sharp, ready and waspish) and satire.

Here in The Irish Times, we are regularly warned by the editor's office that "there is no typeface" for irony. This only highlights the shortcomings of modern printing technology - Helvetica Light was recognised globally as an ironic typeface in the days of hot metal - but there is little we can do about it, so that as journalists we are obliged to present facts, thoughts and opinions crystalclear, in an entirely open, honest and transparent fashion, without any "side" or spin.

Our meaning (if there is any) must be perfectly and instantly obvious to all readers, however simple or sophisticated. If we tell jokes, they must be clearly marked as such, and contain a punchline. If we wish a remark about some individual to be taken "lightly" we must use some grammatical sledge-hammer, such as a series of exclamation marks, to bludgeon the reader into understanding.

It sounds deeply patronising, but that is how we must proceed. Otherwise all is confusion, and misunderstanding, and umbrage taken, and court actions initiated.

I am disappointed therefore at the response by the English department at Edinburgh University to the recent essay hoax. Most third-level English departments these days are well versed, not in irony, which they have long left behind, but in the post-ironic approach.

There is no point in trying to explain this to the man in the street, but any half-intelligent lecturer in Modern English will understand what is meant. The person who marked Richard South's paper should have torn it to shreds - literally, in front of him, and should then have produced Prof Levi Erskine-Bloom and his colleague Parker J. Sprague, or versions of them - such spoofers are two a penny in today's universities, and overpriced at that - and given South a proper dressing-down along with a C-minus. That would put the lid on undergraduate hoaxes for a while.

But, of course, the academics living in their irony towers - beg pardon, ivory towers - do tend to take themselves rather seriously. A newly-published biography (the rather fatuously-titled A Man of Contradictions, by Richard Ollard) of a very famous academic, historian A.L. Rowse, reveals a man endlessly susceptible to slights and criticism, to the extent that his mind was unbalanced by his self-preoccupation (I know "his" is redundant, just checking you are still there).

However, the biographer suggests - kindly, if implausibly - that much of Rowse's vanity and animosity was a pose, allowing him, in the words of one reviewer, "to manipulate a world which he despised and feared".

Lazy thinkers and dinner-party spoofers will therefore aver (they might even "say" - straight out) that all the time, Rowse was just being ironic. That will come as cold comfort to the many victims over the years of his rancour, viciousness and paranoia.

Brendan Glacken can be contacted at bglacken@irish-times.ie