I was really amused to note that Outlook will bold anything prefaced and terminated with asterisks–it’s about the only indication I’ve ever seen that M$ programmers are actually aware of common computer usage and terms. Sure as shit can’t tell from their operating systems!
Of course, it makes it difficult to use snerk in email…
There is a reason to use quotes that I haven’t seen (explicitly) mentioned yet: when one is referring to a term or phrase as the object of discussion. I’m well aware of this because it was the foundation of my advisor’s PhD thesis in logic and he often chastised me for making such errors in my writing – the issue really crops up often in computer science.
I took the above “Quality people, quality products.” as a catchphrase that one is meant to associate with the company. Sort of like Campbell’s slogan is (used to be) “Mmm, mmm, good!”.
Okay, that is just plain evil. 
Welcome to you’re “DOOM”.
Aha! A self-confessed quote-for-emphasis user! All our questions may yet be answered!
My question is, Why? What has brought you to think that this is the thing to do? I ask out of genuine curiosity–I really do want to know why people do this. Where did you learn it? Why did you not notice how strange it looks? Etc.
-FrL-
I always think of oddly-placed quotes as an expression of wink-wink-nudge-nudge. So your example made me picture a flower delivery service where every “delivery” turns into a porn movie.
I never realized people add quotes for emphasis, I’ve never parsed it that way. Like Bayard, I get cards with “Jessica” written on the inside from older folks. I got a Christmas card from my neighbors this year that they just stuck in my mailbox without postage. It said “Jessica” on the front of the envelope. When I read it I had a laugh thinking that they used “Jessica” to mean “The neighbor we call ‘Jessica’ but behind her back we call her ‘Something Much Worse’”
“”"""""""“Boo!”"""""""""
Which is why my favorite from the linked blog is Chili with “Chicken”. So-called chicken. Alleged chicken. Let’s-just-all-agree-to-call-it chicken. Because, mmmboy, there’s nothing I love more than some hot fresh “chicken.”
Woo-hoo! That “psychic trolling” class I’ve been taking is really starting to “pay off”!
(This is my first post in this thread, for the “slower” folks reading right now.)
I had a Speech Teacher who was quite irritated by those who say “quotes” when they mean “quotation marks.”
Damn - and I popped in here just to see what you had to say! 
To the best of my recollection (from a typography class lo these many moons ago), “scare quotes” started being used in signage because they were cheaper and easier to use than changing fonts or adding an underline or similar. As in, the client would say “I’d like to really emphasize this word - maybe underline it?” The sign maker (not representative of all sign makers, obviously, just an example) would say “Adding an underline to only that word requires X more time and Y more money, because of our incredibly complex procedures. How about quotes around it instead? That means the same thing, and is cheaper!” And then the next client sees that everybody else is doing it, so even when the underlining, etc. is just as cheap and easy (due to tech advances) as quotes, they want to do it the way everybody else does, or it looks natural to them now.
Of course, it still completely boggles my mind when I see a hand-painted sign that uses them, but I attribute it to the “everyone else does it” effect. It makes me want to run up to the owner, baa furiously, and run away.
I suspect he got confused between you and me, but I am unsure how he could take my post for trolling, so maybe I am wrong and you were doing it “psychically”.
I saw someone else recently mention our names are similar enough that they have to stop and think sometimes. WhyNot = Wiccan Mom and What Exit? = Jersey guy/Yankee Fan.
“Quality people, quality products” parses to me, because it reads as if the sign-maker is indeed quoting someone else (perhaps some un-named or hypothetical reviewer or customer).
There is an office whose back door I walk by occasionally, and every time I do I have to snicker:
Groundwater & Environmental Services, Inc.
"Please Use Front Door"
That’s just a really bad company motto, you know?
Scare quotes are but one instance of attributive quotes, all of which are properly set off with quotation marks. All they mean is, this is the referent’s chosen term, and not necessarily mine. Scare quotes, sometimes called “sneer quotes,” are the subset where the writer strongly disagrees with the referent.
I’ve seen Dave Barry expounding on this very topic. He thinks people do for decoration.
“Fresh” tomatoes! looks so much more enticing that the mere Fresh Tomato.
Oh. My mistake. I “apologize”.
It’s a form of poisoning the well, of putting whatever is inside the quotes in a negative light. I’ve read some of Noam Chomsky’s books where 10% of the content is ominous-sounding quoted terms whose source is never attributed. It’s a trashy way to write, and it’s even worse when someone does it intending to add emphasis.
On a related note, how about
“Fresh” Strawberry’s For Sale “Here”
Your going to love them!