I remember there having been a thread about the subject. Seems that some
people even collect sightings:

http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

  By the way, could someone say how widespread the phenomenon of misusing
quotation marks for emphasis (instead of cursive or underlining) is? Is it
a phenomenon which only happens eg. in the US? I have never seen this in
Finland. When did this start happening?

  I really can't understand why they are using the quotation marks. What
would be wrong with cursive, or if the medium doesn't really support
cursive (or cursive would be too unnoticeable eg. in a hand-written plaque),
underlining? IMO underlining would be a much more noticeable way to denote
emphasis than quotation marks, even if the latter were somehow a valid way.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> a phenomenon which only happens eg. in the US? 

I have only seen it rarely here, and usually on hand-written signs like your 
link. I think some people here (and you know who you are ;-), for some 
reason, get it into their head that quotes are emphasis instead of 
*de*emphasis. Professionals still know better.

It's less common than seeing you're and your messed up, or there and their, 
for example.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Darren New wrote:

> It's less common than seeing you're and your messed up, or there and 
> their, for example.

Or people who randomly insert apostrophies in their text?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Or people who randomly insert apostrophies in their text?

  Yeah, like here:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-dk1axrNmqU/Se3CavjQB3I/AAAAAAAAHB4/_b-lJrt7a4o/s1600-h/classic.jpg

  Well, I suppose you *could* read it like:

    "Classic" (so to speak) Home is the best home for your $$$

  Not sure that's what they meant, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:4a43e17b@news.povray.org...
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Or people who randomly insert apostrophies in their text?
>
>  Yeah, like here:
>
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-dk1axrNmqU/Se3CavjQB3I/AAAAAAAAHB4/_b-lJrt7a4o/s1600-h/classic.jpg
>
>  Well, I suppose you *could* read it like:
>
>    "Classic" (so to speak) Home is the best home for your $$$
>
>  Not sure that's what they meant, though.

     The way I understand it is: THE Classic Home's.

     I think it's a way of not including the word 'the' to make the letters 
bigger in this case. They even repeat it underneath. I think it's just 
classic and normal advertising... ;)

       ~Steve~


>
> -- 
>                                                          - Warp

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Seems that writing punctuation marks wrongly is not exclusive to the US:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28938136/

  I think it's rather sad when a city official has the opinion that you
need an "A-level high school diploma" in order to find a location by street
address if the name of the street happens to have an apostrophe.

  Since when have apostrophes confused people? I understand some people
abusing them and writing them incorrectly. However, since when is *reading*
text with (correctly-written) apostrophes confused anybody?

  I'd say *not* writing apostrophes where they should be is more confusing.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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