Scare Quotes, Speechmarks, Reported Speech.

A very interesting post, from my point of view, about the phenomenon of 'scare-quoting' from the meditative blogger at God Save the Queen.

Here's an example of the controversy aroused by scare-quoting, from BiasedBBC.

The basic reason one quotes someone is to emphasise that the words you are using do not belong to you, but to someone else. If you don't quote, you are happy to describe things for yourself. This is quite a simple distinction. It's when you consider that you want to both describe things for yourself, and hide behind someone else's words, that there's a problem.

Of course, the 'scare-quotes' thing has become a means of indicating that something is not proven, and from that usage has come to indicate irony- and consequently become a plaything of headline writers and columnists. I know I take advantage of this, sometimes, but I hope not in a manipulative way- and if I do then 'they' started it.