Scare quotes#In speech
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
{{short description|Quotation marks used to indicate non-standard usage}}
{{about|the typographic practice|the use of quotations and headlines to scare readers|Scare-line}}
Scare quotes (also called shudder quotesBoolos, George. Logic, Logic, and Logic. Harvard University Press (1999) {{ISBN|9780674537675}} p. 400.Pinker, Steven. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Penguin (2014) {{ISBN|9780698170308}} or sneer quotesMiles, Murray, [https://books.google.com/books?id=iA8ZQX4jyHoC&q=sneer&pg=PA134 Inroads: Paths in Ancient and Modern Western Philosophy]. University of Toronto Press (2003). {{ISBN|9780802085313}}. p. 134.Herbert, Trevor. Music in Words : A Guide to Researching and Writing about Music. Oxford University Press (2009). {{ISBN|9780199706150}}. p. 126.Horn, Barbara. Copy-editing. The Publishing Training Center. (2008). p. 68.) are quotation marks that writers place around a word or phrase to signal that they are using it in an ironic, referential, or otherwise non-standard sense.University of Chicago Press staff. Chicago Manual of Style. University of Chicago Press (2010). p. 365. Scare quotes may indicate that the author is using someone else's term, similar to preceding a phrase with the expression "so-called";{{Citation|url=http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/quotes/scare|title=Scare Quotes|work=University of Sussex Guide to Punctuation|publisher=University of Sussex|first=Larry|last=Trask|author-link=Larry Trask|year=1997}} they may imply skepticism or disagreement, belief that the words are misused, or that the writer intends a meaning opposite to the words enclosed in quotes.Siegal, Allan M. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. Three Rivers Press (1999). {{ISBN|9780812963892}}. p. 280. Whether quotation marks are considered scare quotes depends on context because scare quotes are not visually different from actual quotations. The use of scare quotes is sometimes discouraged in formal or academic writing.{{cite web |last1=Trask |first1=Larry |title=Scare Quotes |url=https://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/quotes/scare |publisher=University of Sussex |access-date=25 March 2023}}{{cite web |last1=Garber |first1=Megan |title=The Scare Quote: 2016 in a Punctuation Mark |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/the-scare-quote-2016-in-a-punctuation-mark/511319/ |website=The Atlantic |date=23 December 2016 |access-date=25 March 2023}}
History
Elizabeth Anscombe coined the term scare quotes as it refers to punctuation marks in 1956 in an essay titled "Aristotle and the Sea Battle", published in Mind.{{cite journal |last1=Anscombe |first1=G. E. M. |title=I.--Aristotle And The Sea Battle |journal=Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy |date=1 January 1956 |volume=65 |issue=1 |pages=1–15 |doi=10.1093/mind/65.1.1 |jstor=2251218}} The use of a graphic symbol on an expression to indicate irony or dubiousness goes back much further: Authors of ancient Greece used a mark called a diple periestigmene for that purpose.Finnegan, Ruth. Why Do We Quote?: The Culture and History of Quotation. Open Book Publishers (2011). {{ISBN|9781906924331}}. p. 86. Beginning in the 1990s, the use of scare quotes suddenly became very widespread.Howells, Richard, editor. Outrage: Art, Controversy, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan. (2012) {{ISBN|9780230350168}}, p. 89.Haack, Susan, editor. Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays. University of Chicago Press (2000) {{ISBN|9780226311371}}, p. 202.Perlman, Merrill. {{"'}}Scare' Tactics". Columbia Journalism Review. 28 January 2013. Postmodernist authors in particular have theorized about bracketing punctuation, including scare quotes, and have found reasons for their frequent use in their writings.
- Nash, Christopher. The Unravelling of the Postmodern Mind. Edinburgh University Press. (2001) {{ISBN|9780748612154}}, p. 92.
- Saguaro, Shelley. Garden Plots: The Politics and Poetics of Gardens. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. (2006) {{ISBN|9780754637530}}, p. 62.
- Olson, Gary A. Worsham, Lynn. Postmodern Sophistry: Stanley Fish and the Critical Enterprise. SUNY Press (2004) {{ISBN|9780791462133}}, p. 18.
- Protevi, John. Time and Exteriority: Aristotle, Heidegger, Derrida. Bucknell University Press (1994), p. 120. {{ISBN|9780838752296}}.
- Elmer, Johathan. Reading at the Social Limit: Affect, Mass Culture, and Edgar Allan Poe. Stanford University Press (1995) {{ISBN|9780804725415}}. p. 34. In 2014, Slate declared hashtags to be "the new scare quotes" in the sense that both are used for "announcing distance". Just like scare quotes, hashtags such as #firstworldproblems or #YOLO signal that the phrase is not one's own.{{Cite web |last=Waldman |first=Katy |date=2014-05-06 |title=Hashtags Are the New Scare Quotes |url=https://slate.com/technology/2014/05/blessed-hashtags-are-the-new-scare-quotes.html |access-date=2022-04-28 |website=Slate Magazine |language=en}}
Usage
Writers use scare quotes for a variety of reasons. They can imply doubt or ambiguity in words or ideas within the marks,Stove, David C. Against the Idols of the Age. Transaction Publishers (1999) {{ISBN|9781412816649}} pp. xxv–xxvi. or even outright contempt.Trask, Robert Lawrence. Say what You Mean!: A Troubleshooter's Guide to English Style and Usage. David R. Godine Publisher (2005) {{ISBN|9781567922639}} p. 228. They can indicate that a writer is purposely misusing a word or phraseGibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The Modern Language Association of America (1995) {{ISBN|0-87352-565-5}} p. 56. or that the writer is unpersuaded by the text in quotes,Fogarty, Mignon. The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl. Macmillan (2009) {{ISBN|9781429964401}} p. 207. and they can help the writer deny responsibility for the quote. Megan Garber in The Atlantic writes: "to put terms like 'identity politics' or 'rape culture' or, yes, 'alt-right' in scare quotes is ... to make, in that placement, a political declaration."{{Cite web |last=Garber |first=Megan |date=2016-12-23 |title=The Scare Quote: 2016 in a Punctuation Mark |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/the-scare-quote-2016-in-a-punctuation-mark/511319/ |access-date=2022-04-28 |website=The Atlantic |language=en}} In general, the punctuation expresses distance between the writer and the quote.{{cite web
|url = http://linguistlaura.blogspot.com:80/2012/06/scare-quotes.html
|title = Scare quotes
|author = linguistlaura
|date = 18 June 2012
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|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120701013041/http://linguistlaura.blogspot.com/2012/06/scare-quotes.html
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|quote = The 'RF modulator' use is the 'neutral distancing' one on the Wikipedia page (special terminology).
|access-date = 29 December 2021
For example: {{block indent|Some "groupies" were following the band.}} The scare quotes could indicate that the word is not one the writer would normally use, or that the writer thinks there is something dubious about the word groupies or its application to these people.McArthur, Thomas Burns. McArthur, Roshan. Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press (2005) {{ISBN|9780192806376}} The exact meaning of the scare quotes is not clear without further context.
The term scare quotes may be confusing because of the word scare. An author may use scare quotes not to convey alarm, but to signal a semantic quibble. Scare quotes may suggest or create a problematization with the words set in quotes.Davidson, Arnold. I. The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts. Harvard University Press (2004) {{ISBN|9780674013704}} pp. 87–88.Sharma, Nandita Rani. Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of 'Migrant Workers' in Canada. University of Toronto Press (2006) {{ISBN|9781551930589}} p. 169.
Criticism
Some experts encourage writers to avoid scare quotes because they can distance the writer and confuse the reader.Kemp, Gary. What is this thing called Philosophy of Language? Routledge (2013) {{ISBN|9781135084851}} p. xxii.
Editor Greil Marcus, in a talk at Case Western Reserve University, described scare quotes as "the enemy", adding that they "kill narrative, they kill story-telling… They are a writer's assault on his or her own words."Marcus, Greil (10 May 2010). [http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2010/05/greil-marcus-notes-on-the-making-of-a-new-literary-history-of-america-part-1.html "Greil Marcus - Notes on the Making of A New Literary History of America"]. Adapted from a talk given at Case Western Reserve University on 10 April 2010. Scare quotes have been described as ubiquitous, and the use of them as expressing distrust in truth, reality, facts, reason and objectivity.
Political commentator Jonathan Chait wrote in The New Republic,
The scare quote is the perfect device for making an insinuation without proving it, or even necessarily making clear what you're insinuating.Jonathan Chait, [http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/scared-yet "Scared Yet?], The New Republic, 31 December 2008.In 1982, philosopher David Stove examined the trend of using scare quotes in philosophy as a means of neutralizing or suspending words that imply cognitive achievement, such as knowledge or discovery.Stove, David (1982). "Part 1, Chapter 1". [https://web.archive.org/web/20150202193614/http://ontology.buffalo.edu/stove/chapter-01.htm Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists]. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Archived from [http://ontology.buffalo.edu/stove/chapter-01.htm the original] on 2 February 2015. Reprinted as Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism (1998). Macleay Press. {{ISBN|1 876492 01 5}}.
Scare quotes can be replaced by writing text to make the insinuation explicit.
In speech
In spoken conversation, a stand-in for scare quotes is a hand gesture known as air quotes or finger quotes, which mimics quotation marks. A speaker may alternatively say "quote" before and "unquote" after quoted words, or say "quote unquote" before or after the quoted words,{{Citation|url=http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/quote.html |title=Quote, Unquote.|author=John M. Lawler, Prof. Emeritus of Linguistics|publisher=Univ. of Michigan|access-date=9 October 2010}} or pause before and emphasize the parts in quotes. These spoken methods are also used for literal and conventional quotes.