Just thinking ...
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Unnecessary quotation marks The newspaper alerted me to the following website: http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/, where a delightful (I'm sure) young lady is poking fun at unnecessary quotation marks. I'm sending her the following, as well as posting it here (my ex-father-in-law, who was part of the Danish underground during World War II, is my source):
In English and Danish (among others) quotation marks indicate doubt. A "free" vacation will cost you; "fresh" fish isn't. Some other languages, however, such as German, use quotation marks for emphasis—which is what too many English-writers think it means (see the examples above, and think bold or underlined rather than the quotes). During WWII, the Nazis in Copenhagen forced the newspaper to print their propaganda. Members of the underground placed it all within quotation marks. Danes read it and thought, "Aha! I certainly won't believe that!" Germans read it and thought, "Wonderful! They're emphasizing our story!"
A clever way of exploiting language to save lives.
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