“Quotation marks”
It gets me how many people think that quotation marks are supposed to be used for emphasis. I just walked past a building here on campus on which was posted a sign that read something like:
“WET”
“PAINT”
Please enter through side door
OK…if it isn’t really wet, and more importantly, it isn’t really paint, why do we need to worry about touching the door?
Because… if it’s not really wet, and not really paint, do you really want to be touching unidentifiable gooey things?
Comment by Kat — 25-Apr-2002 @ 12:15 am
d00d. My college’s food service people do that on their signs… annoys me a lot. Please throw “all” trash away… Graaagh.
Comment by Gahalia — 27-Apr-2002 @ 12:50 am
Have you seen the Gallery of Misused Quotation Marks? http://www.juvalamu.com/qmarks/
Comment by Paige P. (#168, '00, #43, '01) — 24-Jul-2003 @ 2:10 pm
Yes, I’ve seen the Gallery of Misused Quotation Marks; it’s linked from the Proofreader’s Hall of Shame. Great stuff.
(And by the way, Paige, the address didn’t show up because you entered it in angle brackets; MovableType interprets that as an HTML tag and strips it.)
Comment by codeman38 — 24-Jul-2003 @ 2:41 pm