Scare quotes

This article is about the typographic practice. For the use of quotations and headlines to scare readers, see Scare-line.

Scare quotes (also called shudder quotes,[1][2] and sneer quotes,[3][4][5]) are quotation marks that writers place around a word or phrase to signal that they are using it in an ironic, referential, or otherwise non-standard sense.[6] Scare quotes may indicate that the author is using someone else's term, similar to preceding a phrase with the expression "so-called";[7] they may imply skepticism or disagreement, belief that the words are misused, or that the writer intends a meaning opposite to the words enclosed in quotes.[8] Whether quotation marks are considered scare quotes depends on context because scare quotes are not visually different from actual quotations. The use of scare quotes is sometimes discouraged in formal or academic writing.[9][10]

  1. ^ Boolos, George. Logic, Logic, and Logic. Harvard University Press (1999) ISBN 9780674537675 p. 400.
  2. ^ Pinker, Steven. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Penguin (2014) ISBN 9780698170308
  3. ^ Miles, Murray, Inroads: Paths in Ancient and Modern Western Philosophy. University of Toronto Press (2003). ISBN 9780802085313. p. 134.
  4. ^ Herbert, Trevor. Music in Words : A Guide to Researching and Writing about Music. Oxford University Press (2009). ISBN 9780199706150. p. 126.
  5. ^ Horn, Barbara. Copy-editing. The Publishing Training Center. (2008). p. 68.
  6. ^ University of Chicago Press staff. Chicago Manual of Style. University of Chicago Press (2010). p. 365.
  7. ^ Trask, Larry (1997), "Scare Quotes", University of Sussex Guide to Punctuation, University of Sussex
  8. ^ Siegal, Allan M. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. Three Rivers Press (1999). ISBN 9780812963892. p. 280.
  9. ^ Trask, Larry. "Scare Quotes". University of Sussex. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
  10. ^ Garber, Megan (23 December 2016). "The Scare Quote: 2016 in a Punctuation Mark". The Atlantic. Retrieved 25 March 2023.