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Saturday, August 11, 2012

On Apologetic and "Emphatic" Quotation Marks

I wouldn't buy that sandwich . . .
There's some irony in the title of this post. In fact, I've injected the same type of irony throughout the body of the post as well to give you an exercise in recognizing incorrect usage of quotation marks.

A common mistake people make when using quotation marks is to use them in a (usually unnecessary) "attempt" to draw attention to irony or special word use.

For example,

They named the dog Happy, but he was almost never "happy."

This sentence uses quotes to draw attention to the irony in the dog's name, but this irony is more than obvious enough without putting anything in quotes. In fact, the typical advice from any manual of style is to avoid using quotes like this at all costs. Here are some more examples:

It was almost impossible to drive a car down the broken, potholed "street." 

That dessert looks "flantastic"!

In these two examples the average writer will be more than tempted to leave the quotes, because they somehow make the sentences seem "wittier." Don't fall into that trap! Most attempts to justify/enhance/draw attention to irony, humor, and/or to add a special effect using quotes actually fall flat for the reader. They take away the subtlety of really good humor and irony. There are, however, a few cases where it's okay to use quotes to express irony. If the sentence simply cannot be expressed clearly without adding an ironic tone to one of the words, and rewriting the sentence would lead to overwriting it and making the irony too dull, then please use quotes! For example,

My date’s car “accidentally” ran out of gas. 

The editor suspected that Janet’s original reporting was a little too “original,” and indeed the newspaper later discovered that Janet had invented several of her quotes.

Now here's where you should "never" use quotes. Never use quotes to give emphasis to a particular word. That's what italics are for. I'll admit, to my disgrace, that every now and then I feel myself tempted to add "apologetic" quotes to draw attention to a word for its humorous or ironic effect when that is really unnecessary. A good thing to remember is that what is usually not very obvious to you as the writer is already beating your reader over the head with a baseball bat, so don't be too worried they're going to miss the point. If you're positive readers will misinterpret you or miss out on what you're "really" trying to say, then you probably need to rewrite what you're saying. Don't use quotes as the "lazy" way out.

Now see if you can catch me misusing quotes in this post. If you need some help, I'll give you a hint:

.tsop siht ni ylreporp desu setouq owt ylno era erehT

Sources:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/quotation.htm
http://styleguide.yahoo.com/editing/punctuate-proficiently/quotation-marks

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