Your "gun" is sticking into my hip
See what Ace Ventura did there? He used quotation marks (well, he just spoke the phrase, but you could tell there were quotation marks in the original screenplay) to imply that the word gun actually meant something else. That’s what quotation marks “do.” (I would link to a clip of Chris Farley’s Bennett Brauer here but, NBC seems to be anti-YouTube. Dicks.) Plus, of course, quotation marks have the the more common job of indicating, “I am saying what someone else already said.”
Either way, “lots” of “people” don’t know how to “use” punctuation, and thanks to The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, (a subsidiary of Apostrophe Abuse) it’s now easier than ever to see the Interweb’s largest collection of misused quotations. Revel in the stupidity of others as you watch people try to place emphasis using quotation marks, or unknowingly change the implied meaning of a poster!
I realize that spelling, grammar, and syntax have gone down the shitter since the whole “typing on a computer” fad caught on, and people had to start ignoring vowels and subject/verb agreement for the sake of ruthless WPM efficiency. But, I’m an old-fashioned kind of twentysomething. I miss the good ole days when people spelled out “going to” or “see you” or “I don’t know, my best friend Jill?” (Notice the flawless use of quotation marks, btw.) I know I can’t expect everyone to adhere to all the rules of grammar all the time (this isn’t Russia), but if you’re going to make a sign, something to display in public that represents you, or your business, or your recycle bin… check your fucking work. C’mon people. It’s “embarrassing.”
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