Don’t.
No punctuation transgression amuses me quite as much as the extraneous quotation mark. Because, “really,” when you inexplicably put “quotes” around a word or phrase, what is it that you’re “trying” to “say”?
Here’s how my favorite college professor tried to cure us of the offense: He’d assume that any verb with superfluous quotation marks was a euphemism for sex.
Absolutely, sir, I’d love to “talk strategy” with you this afternoon!
Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
So you can “imagine” how much I “love” Paste Production Coordinator Mark DiCristina’s “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. It documents egregious misuses of quotation marks with photos and annotates them with innuendos and other possible meanings.
Spend 20 minutes on this site, and you’ll likely be cured of superfluous quotation marks for life.
And you “know” what I mean by that.
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