Or Dr. Evil. He “invented” them, you know. 
Or, just anyone using those air quotes. Makes that quotation blog so funny.
Um, because quotation marks aren’t for emphasis, they’re for quoting? What’s unclear about that?
As for me, I’ve been accused of overusing quotation marks, but I only use them for quotation purposes. Several quotes can show up in a sentence due to my long-winded writing style, so I guess that’s why people get confused. Anyway, the quote thing bugs me, but not anywhere near as much as the practice of capitalizing Nouns seemingly at Random. THIS ISN’T GERMAN, PEOPLE.
Oh, I know. It was just the juxtaposition was amusing. To me, anyway. Maybe you had to be there…
Your Satisfaction Is “Guaranteed!”
Hot “Fresh” Coffee
We Deliver, You “Save”
“Parking” Behind Building
Try Our “Doughnuts”
Parking For “Customers” Only
Absolutely No “Solicitation”
Your Fifth Oil Change Is “Free!”
Initially these annoy me but as I compose this list I’m just getting the giggles. I’ve always assumed that the marketing departments of major companies are overpaid, but now I think perhaps not…because this is what occurs when people try to do it themselves.
What about the use of asterisks? Are they symbols masquerading as quotations or possibly wannabe quotes? I’ve often wondered.
“I am disinclined to acquiesces to your ‘request’.”
Actually, using asterisks to denote bolding goes back at least to the early days of Usenet, when newsreaders weren’t able to add certain features to typed text. In a like manner, the backslash was used to signify /italics/ and the underscore served for underlining a word or sentence.
Old habits die hard, I guess, because I still will sometimes use asterisks in place of truly bolding a word. But I think you already knew that.
I’m guilty of doing it on the board, sorry. Will stop… do you mind if I use ** or __? It’s just faster than typing [ b] or changing to the mouse…
Reminds me of the sign at Madison Cube Garden in Futurama:
“No” Gambling.
As mentioned below, bolding asterices have long been an informal but consistently observed internet convention for indicating emphasis. I’m fine with that. I’d also be fine with this or +this+ because neither has any grammatical punctuation purpose. Quotation marks do have a specific purpose and they shouldn’t be used for anything else, because this increases ambiguity of the meaning.
To expand for WhyNot, assuming he/she wasn’t trolling: Quotation marks do have a well-defined and specific meaning. They’re for indicating the separation between the speaker’s words and someone else’s words. Sometime it’s a simple quotation:
He said, “take the trash out”.
This simply indicates that someone said “take the trash out”.
And sometimes it’s a quote that emphasizes the speaker’s distance from the quote, often called “scare quotes”:
The Republicans’ so-called “war on terror”…
Often called “scare quotes”, as above these do indicate that they aren’t the speaker’s words, and that the speaker wishes to emphatically distance himself from the term in quotes.
So when someone writes something like:
We give you the best “service” around
To a literate person, this sounds like they don’t really mean the term ‘service’ in the way you think. It sounds like they’re saying: ‘Ha ha, you sucker. We’ll give you “service”, just like a stud bull “services” a cow.’
It’s a really bad attitude to convey on an advertisement, or a memo like the one I got a few weeks ago:
All “contractors” will be “paid” on Friday
Why the distance from ‘paid’ and ‘contractors’? Does the writer think they’re fake contractors who will be getting fake pay? What’s the writer’s inside joke that he’s not telling us?
Noted in the above is the unnecessary use of emphasis altogether. It wasn’t even necessary to use bold because everybody was getting paid on Friday, and there has never been any other payday than Friday. It reads like an anonymous death threat where every other word is underlined for no good reason. But that’s a separate topic altogether.
Actually, I wanted the Op to provide a few examples. I may or may not be guilty of the quote misuse. From reading further posts, it looks like I don’t abuse it and use it correctly 95% of the time. I had not noticed the practice and it does not bother me.
As to the random Caps, I am very guilty of that one. However, I do it far less than when I joined the SDMB. I think it comes from being an older programmer. As an RPG/COBOL programmer, we only have effectively one font available and no bolding or anything else. So many if not most of us get in the habit of using Caps and even ALL CAPS to emphasize key words. In fact this is habit is actually an improvement over the even older programmers that just used ALL CAPS all the time.
Jim
My godparents used to send me birthday cards signed like this:
Happy Birthday “Kurt”!
My first name really is Kurt. It was like they weren’t sure I was who I said I was. Geez, you guys were right there at my baptism, and you’ve been my parents’ best friends for close to 60 years. Are you really not sure I’m the real Kurt?
I “think” I’m “guilty”, but I’m not “sure”.
Hah!
(I already used “lol” once in this thread, and I am forbidden to invoke it twice.)
I “understand”.
Now, tell me more about your “father” …
–Ponder “Freudulent” Stibbons
You see this a lot in “English Translations” of Japanese Material, where the equivalent of “quotation marks” can be used for Emphasis, although the Random Capitalization is strictly at the request of German students.
You know, I’m not going to be the one to tell Darkseid how to talk.
I dunno, that parses fine for me. It’s saying they’re known for providing quality products.
Like a nickname e.g. Hillary “steady as she goes” Clinton.
I dont know the story behind this one,but I have seen quotes used in similar contexts where the medium is reporting the official version but implying something else as in Bill Bloggs “retires” meaning BB was caught shagging the managers missus and advised that it would be better for all concerned if he retired as of right now rather then force the company to sack him.
Of course this is not the case with Admiral Fallon and is not intended to be construed as such.