Tuesday, September 11, 2007

an article on this very topic

I agree with this writer. As someone familiar with linguistics unnecessary quotes aren't WRONG, they're just funny...

3 comments:

Kathy said...

I just found your site recently and enjoy all the submissions. The only downside is that now I'm preoccupied with finding signs on the road with inappropriate quotation marks! I bring my camera with me a lot, so I've no doubt I'll document one. I just hope when I submit it to you, I don't start out with "After my accident this morning, I managed to get this great shot...."

Thanks for the laughs! I, too, agree with The Sun writer. I don't mind so much the unnecessary quotation marks as I do misspellings and the misuse of apostrophes. I pick my battles wisely.

david hayes said...

It's a fair point, but they still confusing me. A local Asian restaurant has "homemade" teriyaki sauce, and I can't figure out if they make it at home or if it's supposed to seem like they do.

john said...

Awesome article -- it's a difficult phenomenon to write about because when describing the wording of a sign you NEED to use quotes. So it lessens the impact of the impropriety. Ah well.

(...Or should I have said "when describing the wording of a sign you 'need' to use quotes."?)

I wonder what the record for consecutive grammatically correct punctuation marks is. I just used four.