Talk:Scare quotes

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[edit] Jargon or term of art?

Scare quotes are either a term of art or jargon. I'm partial to the term jargon. However, as the jargon page says, it can be slightly POV. It'd be nice to get a journalist's opinion on this.

  • A recent edit has removed the quotes that were intentionally being used in correct fashion, under the misapprehension that they are scare quotes. The confidence of it! Enviable in a way, I suppose...--Wetman 20:33, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"However, when a writer sets off a slang phrase in scare quotes, as if to legitimize the use of slang in formal writing, the result draws attention to the writer's superiority to his "low" material, an intrusion of the writer's persona that is not a desirable characteristic." - Isn't this an aesthetic preference, rather than a fact? 'It is not desirable' seems highly POV to me.

Now that I look at it, the whole article after the first paragraph is not very NPOV - it's all about "how one should use quotes", represented as fact and not attributed to any source. I'm not sure how to rewrite it - anyone feel like taking a stab at it? DenisMoskowitz 16:42, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that this whole paragraph is some kind of elaborate joke. Notice that the writer used scare quotes ironically in the first sentence. I'm going to remove this paragraph and pare down some other sentences; this article should be an explanation of what scare quotes are, not a style guide. --Toby (talk) 05:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In other fields

Scare quotes aren't just a topic in journalism. They are also used in much of academia. savidan(talk) (e@) 03:40, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, in scientific writing it is common to put quotes around words that are not direct quotations. The usage, however, is not meant to be pejorative. Rather, it is meant to imply that the term is being used loosely, as in:
The electron "wants" to attain a lower energy state.
Also, in academic writing we often use quotes when we are inventing a new word, or inventing a new use for a word. In a certain sense we are quoting ourselves. For example:
This newly discovered "strain induced patterning" may have noteworthy applications.
Neither of these two cases seem to be covered by the current definition in the article, even though they are both "used for any other purpose than to identify a direct quotation" ... Anyone care to comment or update article? 132.206.205.106 21:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In some cases, the scare quotes may be omitted without loss.

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of using them? It seems that if you lose the "so-called" spin that the quotation marks provide, you've indeed lost some of the author's meaning. Proposed: remove this line, unless the contributor can better explain his or her meaning. Ckamaeleon ((T)) 11:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Professional opinion

I just sent one of my writers a link to this page to explain what scare quotes are. While I can't give you an attribution, I can tell you that scare quotes are generally considered bad form for a professional publication. I think the article actually does a good job at explaining why -- scare quotes denote a disapproval of a term (a "term") without actually explaining the disagreement. Also, it makes you sound like a sarcastic sixteen year old. The only time scare quotes are acceptable (imho) is if the writer then directly addresses the reason for using them. e.g.: Nobody "likes" him, they simply pretend to be nice to curry favor. Otherwise, avoid it. It's lazy. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.47.97.86 (talk • contribs) 18:18, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, scare quotes are widely considered to be bad style. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of Strunk & White handy, there must be a laconic comment or two about them in that book and it would make a wonderful reference.

Strunk's 1918 work is available online at Bartleby.com and has only this to say:
Proverbial expressions and familiar phrases of literary origin require no quotation marks.
These are the times that try men's souls.
He lives far from the madding crowd.
The same is true of colloquialisms and slang. Moioci 05:44, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the reason is merely that scare quotes often denote disapproval, though; many times they're used when the quoted term is expected to be new or difficult to the audience (e.g. being a too technical term) and the writer wishes to reassure the reader that he's not too dumb to read the article even if he doesn't understand the quoted words, while perhaps suggesting at the same time that the terms are only used by people who want to appear smart, and he's not one of them because of the magic quotes. In any case, they leave too much room for interpretation, and most of the interpretations are not flattering to the writer or at least would never be printed if spelled out explicitly, so the most important thing to know about scare quotes is not to use them. Coffee2theorems 00:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed section of "Examples"

I've removed this section and am placing it here for further analysis of the content and its accuracy and relevance to the subject of this article. ... Kenosis 06:39, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

  • ==Example==
A very normal quotation might be:
Harry was riding his bicycle, not out with the girl next door.

Scare quotes can be used to alter the meaning of this sentence to demonstrate the author's scorn, emphasis, disbelief, or skepticism:

Harry was "riding his bicycle", not out with the girl next door.

Or:

Harry was riding his bicycle, not out with the "girl next door".

Or:

Harry was riding his bicycle, not "out" with the girl next door.

Or:

Harry was riding his bicycle, not out with the "girl" next door.

06:39, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah those are pretty rubbish examples. But there should be some examples on the page.219.90.233.149 11:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I would love to see some examples in the main page; because I think I understand, but I could be mistaken... Kengwen 02:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Emphasis

Used for emphasis? Which style manuals recommend this? —Michael Z. 2006-09-26 16:25 Z

None that I'm aware of! -Phoenixrod (talk) 03:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What about emphasis quotes?

A lot of people (myself included) despise emphasis-only quotes, but they aren't too rare. An example of a plain-emphasis quote being (humorously) misinterpreted as a scare quote: http://bash.org/?4460 . Some people actually seem to think that putting quotes around a word enhances or emphasizes its meaning, even though for most readers the effect is often quite the opposite. --Lode Runner (talk) 10:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Or there are places that advertise "fresh" fish ... enough to make you stay far, far away. But what does this have to do with the article? Are you suggesting putting something in about the too-common misuse of scare quotes for emphasis? -Phoenixrod (talk) 03:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] First Dawkins example

The first example employing Dawkins looks like a use-mention distinction:

  • Dawkins called his concept of the evolving idea the "meme".

Agree/disagree? The definition given in this article seems to mean that any example of quotation marks to make a use-mention distinction is also an example of scare quotes. That strikes me as wrong. Djk3 (talk) 02:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Neutral distancing does intersect with the 'mention' of use-mention distinction. Perhaps noting this is enough of a solution. Binksternet (talk) 16:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I have had a go at adding the use–mention distinction - an article I was not aware of until this point was raised! Snalwibma (talk) 17:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I am satisfied.  :) Djk3 (talk) 19:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)