Ed Huntress wrote:
"Rick Cook" wrote in message
nk.net...

Look, if you want to disagree with me, fine. If you want to defend the
twit that posted the original message, also fine. But do us both a favor
and address the real issue. Snide ill-becomes you, as does an air of
assumed innocence.


Jesus, all that happened there is that you got pedantic about what was
really a joke. Notice the subject line: Cliff was just passing on something
funny that he thought I'd get a kick out of, and it was worth a chuckle. I
welcome all chuckles and chortles, and side-splitters, too, when I can find
them.

Okay, first I owe you (and Cliff) an apology. Since I long ago
kill-filed Cliff as a useless twit, I don't see his original messages.
(Or at least I shouldn't. I need to check that.) When I saw the message,
I thought he had posted another of his drive-bys aimed at a third party.

About five minutes after I posted my last message, it occurred to me
that I might have gotten that wrong. As indeed I did. So I owe you an
apology for that.

Then you tacked on a cheap ad hominem,

Oh hardly a cheap shot. Nor in my opinion an ad hominem. It was the
result of long experience with the individual's posting style -- and the
fact that he prefers drive-bys to serious discussion. So a drive-by
warrants a drive-by.

However in this case I jumped to a conclusion.

Feel free to defend him if you must. But don't you think it would be
more appropriate to actually defend him instead of taking a cheap shot
at me in return? Making me look bad doesn't make this person look good,
after all.

so I popped a mild one back at you.
Pedantic remarks about grammar that are themselves ungrammatical are worth a
mild pop, no? Ad hominems are, too.

The problem, of course, is that my comment was not ungrammatical, at
least not from my standpoint. It is a common -- and very useful --
usage. I had never heard it questioned until you posted the comment.


Now, I don't want to get into a ****ing contest about single- versus double
quotation marks. I live with style manuals all day long and I'm not here for
a busman's holiday. I'm paid right now as a copy editor, although I do as
much writing. Just to settle some dust, I just checked Chicago style, AMA,
and Modern Language Association style, plus Brittain's _Punctuation for
Clarity_, and I see no mention of the use of single quotes as you're
describing.

And yet as the sources I cited indicate single quotes are commonly used
in that fashion. I could have multiplied examples. I realize the style
manuals you refer to don't use single quotes in that way, but that leads
us into the area of descriptive versus prescriptive usage.

My personal criterion is simple. If the usage contributes to clarity,
then use it. If not, it is at best suspect. The use of single quotes in
this fashion pretty obviously improves clarity.

The problem with double quotes in these uses is that they are easily
mistaken for direct quotations. This isn't a theoretical problem. I have
had it happen to me. As you correctly point out, in these uses you are
not necessarily directly quoting anyone. Even if you happen to be
directly quoting, as I was, the important point was not that the wording
was exact but the disagreement.


In fact, they use double quotes for all of those circumstances,
except that MLA style has a weird one that I haven't seen befo they use
single quotes for translation of a foreign word when the translation follows
the foreign word "with no intervening punctuation." I think they cooked that
one up over a case of Chardonnay. The other major style manuals make no
mention of it.

I started writing for a big, classy publisher 30 years ago, and the AP style
manual was forced down my throat then.

I learned it in journalism school sometime earlier than that. Then I had
it reinforced when I worked for the AP. (You have _no_ idea how
crotchety the New York copy desk can be.) But, as I say I have been
using the convention for years and no one ever questioned it before.

NYT style was our secondary
reference. That's where I learned about the use of single quotes in
headlines and captions. Both manuals agreed on that point.

So, I'm really curious about where you came up with this "meta meaning"
stuff. That's a term from linguistics. Maybe it's in the Style Manual for
Linguists. 'Don't know. I've never heard of it if they publish one. g

It's more commonly referred to as the "use-mention distinction". (See:
http://www.unconventional-wisdom.com/WAW/ROBERT.html) It apparently
originated in philosophy, but it occurs in linguistics and many other
fields. It is also common in ordinary writing.

Of course, we all see the (mis)use of single quotation marks in NG messages.
We aren't writing for publication here, and it's fun to loosen up. But it
was worth a pop in exchange for your cheap ad hominem, and it was funny
because you threw in the "professional writer" line. Single quotes used as
you're defending them are not literate.

Since I was a lowly journalism major and am now a lowly free-lance
writer, I leave a discussion of what is 'literate' to my betters. I will
simply note that it make a useful distinction which is extremely common
in all forms of writing. It is also quite well-understood.


Professional writers might use them
in a NG message, but they wouldn't seriously cook up a bunch of baloney to
defend them if someone called attention to the misuse.

Did you bother to read the references I cited? You may not agree with
them, but using single quotes in these circumstances is both a common
and approved use. And, to repeat, one which aids clarity.

There might be a copy editor out there who knows better. So I'll assume you're just trying to push
a point to see if you can get away with it. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress


Whether you like it or not, Ed, it is both a common and a useful
convention. Since it is useful I intend to keep using it until someone
who signs my checks tells me otherwise.

And I repeat the key question: Does it in any way detract from clarity?

--RC