Irony is a contrast between expectation and reality, or between what is said and what is meant. It thrives on the gap between appearance and truth.

Verbal irony occurs when a speaker says one thing but means another, often the opposite. Situational irony occurs when events turn out contrary to what was anticipated. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows what characters do not. All three forms depend on a double awareness: the surface and the underlying actuality. Irony can be comic, bitter, gentle, or tragic depending on the stakes and the tone.

Detecting irony requires contextual sensitivity; the same sentence can be literal or ironic according to situation and delivery. Writers signal irony through tone, incongruity, exaggeration, or the arrangement of events. Over-obvious irony feels heavy-handed; successfully managed irony gives the reader the pleasure of seeing through the surface to a more complex truth.

When meaning lives in the discrepancy rather than in the straightforward statement, irony is at work.