Have you ever noticed how many unnecessary quotation marks are used?<\/p>\n
I once wrote the following as a guest blogger:<\/p>\n
Quotation marks seem to be fashionable at the moment, which is a shame as they are being used so badly! <\/span><\/span>“Recommended by doctors and mothers” makes me feel like they are telling me a lie – if it is a genuine statement, why does it need to be in quotation marks?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Quotation marks are correctly used to:<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n – indicate you are quoting someone<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n – indicate speech (e.g. He said “How are you?”)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span>– present a title of something<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n – show the text lacks credibility or truth, or at least is not verifiable\u00a0(e.g. The media release stated the product was “superior”)<\/span><\/p>\n If you are tempted to use quotation marks for emphasis, try bold, italics, underline, colour, indenting or size of font instead – it will stand out more and not send any incorrect messages!<\/span><\/p>\n