On “Quotation Marks”
Perhaps it’s because my editor daughter has been visiting for the past week, but I hear the Muse of Punctuation whispering in my ear. And a serendipitous encounter with a weird sign on Friday got me going.
If I were a stand-up comic—well, I’d be broke, out of work, first off. But I might start like this: So, what’s up with quotation marks? Have y’all noticed?
And I’d want to talk about the random nature of quotation marks in contemporary American discourse. Once I explain what I’m on about here, I hope that many of you will have your own examples, and will share them in the comments; but the earliest memory I have of this—of being aware of the weird ways in which Americans will sometimes use quotation marks, especially on handmade signs—dates back to graduate school at UCLA in the 1980s. Four or five blocks from our family student apartment—dangerously close, that is to say—stood a West L.A. landmark: Primo’s Westdale Donuts. They’re amazing, as media accounts will attest. And Mrs. Primo (real name) was wonderful: she got to know our family, what we liked (which, for me, was everything), and would always sneak back to the kitchen to grab something hot for us.
But we were always mystified by their iconic sign, Robyn & I:
“Take Home A Dozen.” Indeed! But why the quotation marks? Perhaps it was because I was a snarky English graduate student, but to me, quotation marks meant one of two things. First, it might mean that these words were indeed a quotation—direct reported speech. Someone had once said, “Take home a dozen,” and the quotation marks serve as marker of that original utterance.
Except that it’s hardly an original utterance, or one really requiring such fastidious citation. It’s a common expression in the bakery biz; I’d imagine it goes back almost as far as the English word dozen, which the OED pegs at about 1300. Way back.
So it’s not a quotation, I’m willing to bet. The other common reason we put words and phrases in quotation marks (besides calling attention to a word as a word, as opposed to using it in its representational sense—so that I might, above, have written “it goes back as far as the English word ‘dozen,’” but for the fact that it would have been very confusing)—the second reason is that we wish to distance ourselves from an expression. These quotation marks are often described as “scare quotes”: I surround the following phrase, such as “fair and balanced,” because I want to alert you to the fact that you ought not take it at face value, or as the expression of my own opinion or viewpoint. In fact, we can think of scare quotes as being a subset of the first type of quotation mark: I present here a direct quotation—from a hypothetical idiot.
And that’s not what’s happening with the Primo’s sign, either: certainly there’s nothing ironic about the suggestion that I “Take Home A Dozen.” (And let’s not even get into the capitalization of the “A”?)
By now, you’re thinking that I’m a genuine whacko: “He probably has an awesome paperclip collection.” (Direct quotation of your statistically likely thought at this point.) Let me present two more quick examples of surreal quotation marks, ask again that you “show & tell” a bit in the Comments section, and I shall beat my hasty retreat.
First: the anchoring picture in today’s post, from a stairwell in which one of the stairs was being repaired. (In my haste, not wanting to look like a weirdo taking a picture at a crime scene, I inadvertently chopped out the stair-like elements of this stairwell. Trust me: there’s a stair right under this sign, undergoing stair cosmetic surgery.) Why is “STAIR” in quotation marks? (And check out the jazzy underscoring on the “REPAIR”! And the subtle poetry of the whole thing….)
And I’ll leave you with one last example, of a somewhat different kind. Last night we had dinner at Walter’s in Claremont; while we were waiting for the check, I decided I’d look the restaurant up on Zagat To Go on my iPhone, to see what they had to say. (I’m told it’s traditional to look up reviews before one makes a dining decision, but we’ve been to Walter’s before, plenty.) Here’s the Zagat’s review:
Long a Claremont “institution”, this “charming”, “small-town” restaurant remains a “steady” supplier of a “wide” sampling of Eclectic cuisine, including “unusual Afghan specialties”; good-”value” pricing, a “casual” mazelike dining room and a “wonderful” leafy patio keep this “old-reliable” “popular” among the “locals.”
This is a freakin’ weird piece of prose, though not unlike the other Zagat reviews; here, it seems to me, our sloppiness with quotation marks exacts a toll. I assume that the quotation marks are meant to indicate that the words so enclosed are quotations from some source—reviewers, presumably. But inevitably, they start to look like scare quotes, which has a rather different effect. “Charming” might mean the opposite of charming—cloying? That last word, “locals”—I’m one of them, right? Am I being mocked? (And a cautionary word for the impressionable, including my students: in American English, commas go inside quotation marks, not outside. You’d best believe the good people at Zagat will be hearing from me!)
So there, I’ve outed myself as obsessive about quotation marks. It’s a great relief to get this off my chest. Fellow sufferers? Tell your tales in the Comments section?
Perhaps this blog will be of “interest” to you: http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/
I’m completely with you on this one, Kevin. I see these weird quotes everywhere and cannot figure out why they’re there. I think sometimes people use them in place of underlining or italics–to emphasize the word, in other words. But for people who are aware of the legit uses of quotes, they have the exact opposite of the intended effect. When you see “The Best in Town” on a bakery window, you’re not sure how to take it.
My favorite example that I can think of off the top of my head was on a window of an Italian deli around these parts. Their window advertised “Ho-Made” lasagna, which never failed to crack me up.
On “ho’ made”: there’s a restaurant in Anna, IL: The Potato Barn. We went there only once, with out-of-town company, and saw “ho’ made pies” on the menu. We couldn’t stop laughing, and said we were going to demand to see the ho that had made the pies….
I’ve got your relevant link right here.
I notice that Kevin won’t even touch Anna’s “interest.”
He may want to be “so over it,” but some of us aren’t.
Maybe it’s not truly a stair anymore because it’s being repaired so quotation marks would be appropriate.
I’m willing to create a reality to fit the “circumstances” most of the time.
This is an old topic now, but I just opened a package that contained one of those silica gel packets, labeled:
SILICA
GEL
“Do Not Eat”
Throw Away
Dessicant
It must be an emphasis quotation here, although it just reminds me of “Best Pies in Town” on a restaurant sign.