“Just Fine” Uses of Quotation Marks

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. How are you? My name is Andy. I’m calling from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I’m a big fan of the show. I’ve been listening for a couple of years now.

And I finally had a question for you, but it isn’t really about words. It’s actually more about punctuation that seems to be functioning as a figure of speech.

So the punctuation in question is quotation marks. So punctuation or quotation marks, I mean, obviously they’re, you know, used to denote the literal words of someone who’s talking. But of course, they can be used to indicate sarcasm or somebody not being literal.

And I could give you a few examples if you’d like.

Sure.

So somebody might say your quote unquote friend is going behind your back about that job promotion. Kind of a way of being sarcastic or you might say in place of that so-called or supposed. And of course, you know, when you’re talking to somebody in person, you know, they might do the hand gesture and not even say the quotation marks.

Right, the air quotes.

Yeah, exactly, air quotes.

And so my question, well, I guess a few questions. I mean, I think I understand the concept well, and I think a lot of people understand the concept, but I’m wondering where did this come from? How long has this been a part of our language? Does it exist in other languages? Kind of anything and everything about this phenomenon.

That’s more than we have time for. Pull up a chair. But let me just summarize by saying using some kind of annotation to mark text as doubtful, irregular, uncertain, or to call attention to it goes back as old as text itself, basically.

Okay.

And the term scare quotes dates only to the 1950s, but that doesn’t mean anything. We always have to separate the history of a term from the history of the idea, because often, as is in the case here, an idea is older than the term for it.

So, for example, scare quotes, as we call them, mark a term as not quite accepted by the writer. But the reasons for it not being accepted can vary widely. You might see an academic text where something is put in scare quotes simply because it’s a nonstandard term or it’s an archaic term for a concept and not because they doubt it, but because it’s the best term that they have at the moment.

Or you might see a term being put in scare quotes because they’re using archaic equipment and they can’t use italics. You know, there are lots of different reasons for it.

And it’s, you know, I years ago wrote a blog post about the quotes used for emphasis because there’s often what I consider to be a smirking laughter around quotation marks used to emphasize.

Right.

And often because you’ll see these used, say, on roadside fruit stands or hand-lettered signs in rural situations or, you know, something that somebody’s put, improvised to put at a counter to indicate, you know, for your convenience and convenience is put in quotes and people will mock the sign because they intentionally misread those quotes as being sarcastic.

But that isn’t the only use of quotes. Quotation marks have a thousand different uses. And if you intentionally misread them, that’s on you, not on what the writer intended. And so anyway, my point is that these kinds of offsetting of information by indicating goes back to the ancient Greeks. We can see the scribal culture had many, many ways when they were, so they would take old writing and they would rewrite it onto new parchment or onto new lambskin or whatever, papyrus or whatever the material was in order to preserve it or to pass it on to somebody else.

And they would put new notation sometimes because the original was hard to read or because they felt that it had been transcribed incorrectly in the first place. And so they’d put notations, very similar to what we use today.

And so this kind of thing has been done, again, as long as there’s been writing culture.

It’s interesting that the phenomenon goes back, I mean, at least 2,000 years, it sounds like.

Yeah, yeah. Longer than that even still.

So, Indy, does that help? Does that answer your question?

Yeah. No, I mean, it’s definitely interesting. And I thought especially interesting was the quotation marks to indicate emphasis. I’ve seen that. You know, you might see, you know, fresh fruit on the side of the road and fresh will be in quotation.

And point well taken. It’s, I mean, quotation marks can have a lot of different uses and, you know, you can understand what’s intended.

Yeah, yeah, and I get kind of shirty about it because I just don’t like the sneering. I figure the sneering for me is a cheap laugh to no end.

Oh, yeah, this is all very fascinating. I really, you know, appreciate you doing the work and looking into that. I really appreciate it.

All right, take care, Andy.

Keep listening, Andy.

Oh, will do.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Thank you, Martha.

Thank you, Grant.

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