‘‘SCARE QUOTES’’ TRENDING UPWARD?
‘‘Scare quotes’’ trending upward?
by Dan Bloom
As a newspaper reporter and editor for over 40 years, in America and Asia, I’ve been following the
ascent of the somewhat meaningless punctuation term “scare quotes” as it moved from academia to
the popular culture. Two years ago, Tom Bartlett, at the Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote a blog post about ‘‘scare quotes’’ titled "What’s ‘Scary’ About Scare Quotes? (May 14, 2010), and a CHE post this past April by David Silbey titled "Why Historians Never Trust Their ‘Sources.’ " (April 18. 2012) delved, briefly, into the scare quotes ‘‘issue’’.
Washington Times updates style guide
Quote:
When the Washington Times, the conservative newspaper founded and run by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, changed its top leadership recently, observers expected that more change would be coming. They weren’t wrong – with the replacement of executive editor Wes Pruden by John Solomon, who has extensive experience at more mainstream media outlets, we’ve already seen one small but meaningful change to the paper’s coverage. The Times has altered several elements of its style guide, telling staffers to use more neutral terminology instead of the doctrinaire wording and scare quotes favored by the previous editorial regime. In an e-mail memo that has been widely circulated now, one editor wrote:
All:
Here are some recent updates to TWT style.
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Clinton will be the headline word for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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Gay is approved for copy and preferred over homosexual, except in clinical references or references to sexual activity.
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The quotation marks will come off gay marriage (preferred over homosexual marriage).
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Moderate is approved, but centrist is still allowed.
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We will use illegal immigrants, not illegal aliens.
Those were some pretty long “posts”, scarequotes.
Dear SCHMEn, just trying to get to the bottom of THIS! any ideas who coined it and why and when? how come everyone is using this term all over but very few people question WHAT THE HECK IT MEANS or WHO COINED IT and why? We need…answers…and if no answers, then we need a BETTER TERM for this quote unquote thing…since SCARE means nada today, agree?
aplogize for long posts, sorry. just trying to get word out, ignore the long ones if headache ensues. SMILE…but what to do next? email me offline at danbloom gmail
several major news outlets are interested in doing a big STORY about this scare quotes term, pro and con. The reporters might want quotes. Any up for a quote? Dish here: what’s your POV on scare quotes as a TERM? Is it a useful meaningful TERM or is it a nonsense term today? and what better term might you suggest to USA and Uk newspaper editors, instead of SCARE QUOTES? such a sneer quotes, irony quotes, etc.? JON STEWART calls them dick quotes. if we replace scare quotes with new term, i suggest we need one syllable word again, such as FLAG quote, meanign this qyote has been FLAGGED, in terms of copy editing flaGGING OF A typo etc OR SPOT QUOTE, as in spotlight, meaning this quote is spotlighted here for your perusal pro or con?
Closing this one.
scarequotes, you may be a blogger, but you know “nothing” about copyright enfringement, board etiquette, writing in easily read form, or multitudes of other things that someone ‘would’ know if they were who they said they were or had the “credentials.”
Wander the earth for another 20 years, come back and maybe we’ll be ready for you.
Banned.
samclem, Moderator