Thursday, August 2, 2007

Stop "it"

This has to be said to everyone out there who is thinking of writing anything. Stop abusing quotation marks. They do not add emphasis. Italics or underlining adds an emphasis, as does bolding text. Although bolding is generally reserved for titles.

Quotations marks have their usaged defined in their name. You use quotation marks to show quotations. You don't use "quotation marks" to show "quotations."

I blame the use of air quotes - people making ironic or actual quotations and wagging their fingers to emphasize this fact.

I know it is a hard fact of life, but written text and conversational speaking are totally separate things. I mean, even when I "write" for this "blog" I try not to "abuse" "punctuation." Please do the same.

It doesn't make you look clever. It makes you look like a jackass.



1 comment:

Adrian said...

Again, I'd suspect this is a personal attack, except I haven't been doing it lately.

For myself, I blame Chris Farley's Bennett Brauer character. Because he "frightens little children."