Grammar Moses: I hope you 'enjoy' this column
The creative team at BBDO should win awards for its "Just OK is Not OK" AT&T TV ad in which a surgeon walks into a patient's room crowing "Guess who just got reinstated?!"
You know the ad. It always has me in stitches.
Seeing that ad reminded me of a column I wrote two weeks ago. It addressed a reader's complaints of our use of quotation marks around a religious term that was unfamiliar to the reporter.
The reader complained the quotation marks were tantamount to preceding the term with "so-called" and that it cast a shadow on the term.
Bear with me for a moment. My neural pathways are unlike those of most other people.
In the TV ad, the significant other of the surgical patient asks a nurse, "Have you ever worked with Dr. Francis?"
The nurse replies, "Oh, yeah, he's ... OK."
If she weren't holding a tablet, the nurse clearly would have put air quotes around "OK."
Bad signs
Faithful reader Stan Zegel forwarded me a story from the Daily Mail, which provides several photographs of signs that use quotation marks to ill effect.
Given that I don't have a content-sharing agreement with the Daily Mail, I can't share with you the photos, but if you're computer-comfortable, you can find them here: https://mol.im/a/7895687.
The quotation marks in these signs serve only to call into question the safety, authenticity or validity of what's sandwiched between them:
• "Qualified" mechanic wanted. Apply inside. (I consider myself a "qualified" car mechanic, because I'm cheap.)
• On a billboard: Enjoy your "safe" holiday. (Double-bolt your motel room door and check for bedbugs.)
• On a Starbucks sandwich board: Please feel free to ask one of our lovely baristas for a "second service." (OK, get your minds out of the gutter.)
• A plaque on a park bench: In memory of Jen and Ted South, two of life's "nice" people. (Watch for splintered boards and wet paint.)
• On a menu board: Please let us know about your "allergies." (We're going to put EXTRA gluten in your food.)
• And on a banner: Smart Lipo by a "real" plastic surgeon. (Not by the actors who played plastic surgeons on the "Nip/Tuck" TV series.)
'14-year-old girl'
Reader Steve Bense asked about the use of quotation marks, or lack thereof, in a story from a competing news operation.
The headline was: Man charged with soliciting 14-year-old girl.
In essence, a man faces charges alleging he talked creepily online to a police officer the man thought was a teenage girl and lined up a meeting at a restaurant.
Steve wonders whether the headline should have had quotation marks around "14-year-old girl," as I've done so here - and whether further references in the story should have been enveloped in quotation marks to signal that this really wasn't a 14-year-old girl.
I see where you're going, Steve.
But headlines are tricky things. We reserve the use of quotation marks (which appear in headlines as single quotation marks for actual quotations). So we would avoid this sort of construction.
And while I agree that using quotation marks within the story would have provided some clarity for the reader - as no actual 14-year-olds exist in the - I simply would have written around it to be more direct.
• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.