Don't quote me on that!

Don't quote me on that!

I really enjoy the wacky comic strip "Pearls Before Swine,"   by brilliant and undeniably weird Stephan Pastis, but it offers all too often a good example of misusing quotation marks, which is today's lesson. Check out "Hoss" in the first panel of the following strip (I erred earlier in saying he forgot to close the quote in "Bonanza" -- but it's Pastis' fault for using single quotation marks and putting the closed quote mark exactly above the period instead of one space past it, so I thought it was an exclamation point; the way to avoid such confusion in the first place is to properly use double quote marks instead of single quote marks. Single quote marks are for quotes within a quote. So it should have looked like "Bonanza." with the quote marks past, not right above, the period):








Pastis does it again in the strip below with "Miss Manners" in the first panel: 







I realize some readers will disagree with me, especially given that Hoss is technically a nickname (and nicknames get quote marks if you follow Associated Press style) for a character whose real first name is Eric. But in this case it no longer really functions as a nickname because it is the name EVERYONE uses to address him -- even his brothers and his father. He's never referred to by his real name of Eric and no one on the show, other than his relatives, seems to know his real name anyway. 


So it's not like gangster Vincent "The Chin" Gigante. Sure, he was called The Chin by associates and the media a lot, but I'm certain he was addressed using his real name a lot more. In that case, "The Chin" deserves the quote marks around it per AP's style.



Another good example would be Shemp Howard 
   of the Three Stooges. His given name was Samuel, but his own mother couldn't even pronounce it correctly and it came out sounding more like Shemp. That became in essence his real first name and his show business moniker, so it was no longer a real nickname worthy of quote marks.

Same with Miss Manners. It's the professional name the columnist uses. There is no valid reason for putting quote marks around that name. You don't write "Madonna" or "Lady Gaga" or "Cher" or "Ann Landers" -- just Madonna, Lady Gaga, Cher and Ann Landers (not the columnist's real name) as the legitimate names they are known by.


I am amazed at how poorly most people, even journalists, understand how to use quote marks correctly. Especially egregious are feeble attempts to be ironic, highlight a phrase (especially a cliche or slogan, such as "the deli best") or to editorialize. Examples: He figured his "best" was good enough, but it was a case of "too little too late." There shouldn't be ANY quote marks in that sentence.

I understand that not everyone interested in good writing or editing uses Associated Press style, but its policy on quote marks is still an excellent guide for at least minimizing the widespread abuse of those key characters.

Here is what AP style says on composition titles and which items to put quote marks around. Although I adhere to it while editing at a newspaper, I do disagree with one thing: the practice of using quote marks around video games. You wouldn't write that you play "baseball" or "chess" or "Scrabble"   with your friends, so why would a video game be any different and take quote marks? Anyway, here is the entry:

composition titles Apply the guidelines listed here to book titles, computer game titles, movie titles, opera titles, play titles, poem titles, album and song titles, radio and television program titles, and the titles of lectures, speeches and works of art.

-- Capitalize the first and last words of the title and all 

principal words, including all verbs and prepositions and conjunctions with more than three letters. 

-- Put quotation marks around the names of all such works except the Bible and books that are primarily catalogs of reference material. In addition to catalogs, this category includes almanacs, directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, gazetteers, handbooks and similar publications. Do not use quotation marks around such software titles as WordPerfect or Windows.

Here are some examples of those rules applied correctly:
Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"

The Alfred Hitchcock classic film "Psycho"

His favorite book is "The Great Gatsby"

He looked it up in the atlas and the dictionary

Lisa quoted from a verse in Jeremiah in The Old Testament

Jimmy loves to play "Super Mario 2"

In Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is a truly dysfunctional family

Everyone knows the songs in "Jesus Christ Superstar"

Sally missed "The Twilight Zone"     marathon on TV 

You might be wondering what the big deal is about using AP style, especially if you don't work for a newspaper. Well, consistency and accuracy should be what we are striving for, and AP style has proved to be one of the best standards that most writers and editors can agree upon as an accepted source for maintaining such accuracy. Some may prefer, for example, the Chicago Manual of Style, but I believe AP style is best. What matters is that whatever source you agree to use, you STICK to it and stay consistent.

Just to give one example, whatever style file you use to spell the name of the 9/11 terrorist organization,   be sure to spell the name that way every time. Because the name is a transliteration from a language (Arabic) with no equivalent alphabet (a=a certain character, b=a certain character, etc.) in English, we use a phonetic spelling. So some sources might spell it Al Qaeda and others Al Qaida. Still others use al Qaida, al-Qaida, Al-Qaida, Al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda. No spelling is right or wrong, but the point is to pick one and then be consistent in always spelling it that way (the purpose of having a style guide in the first place).

I like the way the website english.answers.com puts it:

 

The majority of publications and many companies use AP style. Strict adherence to AP style -- or any stylebook, for that matter -- ensures consistency, accuracy, and clarity in your prose. If, for example, you used italics for some TV shows but put others in quotes, it would be confusing for the reader. When you're consistent in your writing, the audience will read right over those things without much thought.

The Associated Press has specific rules for when to use quotation marks. The rule for when to use italics, though, is pretty simple: AP writing doesn't use italics. Although AP style is widely used as a default style, not every publication or company uses it, and therefore may have its own rules for when to use quotation marks and italics. Stylebooks are simply in place to ensure consistency, accuracy, and clarity when writing. That's why it's important to learn your particular company's style guide, regardless of whether the company uses AP style, Chicago Style, or its own.

Here are some more truly baffling and totally incorrect uses of quote marks by people who have no clue whatsoever how to use them, courtesy of unnecessaryquotes.com. It points to perhaps the greatest abuse of quote marks, which is to randomly use them for phony emphasis (or should I say "emphasis")? : 


                         





I could go on and on, but I'll point out only one more type of quote mark violation: using them to editorialize, to inject an opinion or be sarcastic or derogatory. A few examples would be writing in a straight news story that Madonna is an "actress," that the "highly educated" professor made some kind of mistake, that the police officer showed his "integrity" by beating the suspect, that a certain "writer" will be at the library to sign his "book."

It's almost as bad as using cliches -- it's a similar type of lazy, unoriginal, inappropriate writing that no writer or editor should ever permit. Especially if you are writing a news story that purports to be objectively presenting the facts.



More rules to know about quote marks:
Commas and periods go inside the quote mark, and semicolons and colons go outside. The question mark goes inside if the quoted material itself constitutes a question but outside if the sentence is a question but the quoted portion is not (such as Do you believe the best film of all time is "The Wizard of Oz"?) 
 

On a related note, did you know that every Sept. 24 is National Punctuation Day? It's coming up before you know it, so make your party plans and do your shopping now ...



It's time to wrap it up. 
 

 

 

My next post will discuss adverbs that end in -ly. I'll try to do so quickly, efficiently and properly. Stay tuned ...

Quotation marks: Periods and commas go inside quote marks: - See more at: http://journalistsresource.org/skills/style/ap-style-basics#sthash.mFkQOtZf.dpuf

Quotation marks: Periods and commas go inside quote marks: - See more at: http://journalistsresource.org/skills/style/ap-style-basics#sthash.mFkQOtZf.dpuf

Quotation marks: Periods and commas go inside quote marks: - See more at: http://journalistsresource.org/skills/style/ap-style-basics#sthash.mFkQOtZf.dpuf

Quotation marks: Periods and commas go inside quote marks: - See more at: http://journalistsresource.org/skills/style/ap-style-basics#sthash.mFkQOtZf.dpuf