Superfluous quotation marks

January 22, 2016 • 7:00 am

One of my first experiences with superfluous quotation marks was as a young assistant professor at the University of Maryland. There was to be a post-seminar social, and the chairman sent around a notice announcing that “coffee” and “cookies” would be served. Were these faux comestibles, I wondered? Now I encounter superfluous quotation marks all the time, and of course there’s a website for these things: The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. It’s a hoot.

Here’s my addition: the email I received from the company to which the Indian embassy outsources its visa program (a screenshot from my phone):

IMG_0936

I wonder what “received” means when it’s in quotes! Are they pulling my leg?

68 thoughts on “Superfluous quotation marks”

  1. The quotes around ‘under process’ might well be justified if they have in fact just put your application into a pile with the intention of dealing with it when they are good and ready!

  2. I suspect that these are – pardonnez moi – “categories” that appear in their – “system”!

      1. And just in case capitalizing, bolding, and italicizing were still not indication enough…

    2. Yes, probably official terms in their visa regulations. I sometimes do the same myself in bureaucratic communications, so that the recipient knows exactly what procedures or provisions I’m invoking.

      1. Steven Pinker says language recursion means you will never run out of new meanings and new things to say.

        1. It has come to my attention that Steven Pinker says language recursion means you will never run out of new meanings and new things to say.

          1. It has come to my attention that Steven Pinker says language recursion means you will never run out of new meanings and new things to say in bed.

      2. Always remember that the common exaggerations “looool” and “lololol” actually mean “laughing out out out out loud” and “laughing out loud out loud out loud” (or other combinations). 😉

  7. That means they have a multi-step process and that they are indicating where it is in that process. They have officially received it (Receive being a process step) and it has been moved to the process step called “under process”. After that, it may move to, say, “Approved” or “Rejected”.

    You just have to go with the (process) flow.

    ;-))

  8. Whenever I see that sort of thing I figure it’s an artifact of a program that looks for fields marked somehow, and then the output is formatted – possibly by work around – with the offending apostrophes….

    That’s is to say do not think a “Homo sapiens” “composed” the message – or “the” message.

    1. I concur. The message is composed by a script, and someone has probably filled in the database that feeds the script with “‘Recieved'” and “‘Under Review'” etc.
      I have the same thing ad nauseam with data fields that want dimensions in inches or feet, and the script sometimes calls for the units to be attached, and sometimes doesn’t. So sometimes I end up with 9_7/8″” and other times 9_7/8.
      To be honest, the last couple of years using inches for diameters and metres for lengths, then having to do volumes in metres cubed … [shakes head]. Bloody “oilfield units”. It’s enough to crash your spacecraft into Mars.

          2. I know, I know… Just being cheeky :). Probably the most useless spelling “rule” 😉 ever invented.

  10. The staff restaurant of my former place of work sold “Fresh Chanterelles” on a regular basis. It always was the *only* food put in quotation marks on the menu. I always wondered if that’s what was written on the can.

    1. My kids recently went to a restaurant which had a sign on the door of the can stating “Rest Room ‘OPEN.'” That’s both perplexing and disturbing.

  11. “perhaps” PCC(E) “needs” to ask if he “needs to “resubmit”” his “application”.

  12. The BBC frequently does this, e.g. “Terrorist ‘killed'”. I figured it was a British thing, like using plural nouns as modifiers, e.g. “drugs problem”. Or that they didn’t want to take responsibility when quoting a official source.

    1. I think the intention in such cases is to indicate that it is not necessarily a confirmed fact. Placing ‘killed’ in quotation marks (as the term suggests!) indicates that they are quoting a report from somewhere/someone else. If they have done the fact checking and are confident the story is true note quotation marks are used.

  13. I used to get a chuckle in graduate school every time I approached the animal facility and saw the door I was going into hand-labelled by the cleaning staff as “mice”.

    1. Was the door labelled “mice”, i.e. with the word : mice or was the door labelled ” “mice” ” ?

      1. No, no, I think it’s much more likely that “hinting” should be in quotes. Or perhaps “vaguely.” 🙂

  15. The difficulty in eradicating such things is that the punctuation marks become a bit addictive; if the addict forces himself to leave them out, he feels a sense of anxiety, like wondering if he left the iron on at home.

    What many people don’t get is that if some writing trait doesn’t help convey meaning, then it impedes it. Almost nothing is neutral.

  16. Just this morning, I threw out a plastic bag from my local supermarket deli that said
    Sliced Fresh “Daily”

    (Actually I want my pastrami sliced when I order it, not every morning at 8AM.)

  17. Love it. I have a friend who as a teenager showed me his family photo album in which all the labels had quotes around the names — “Bill” and “Martin” with “Mum” and “Dad”. My guess in that case was that someone got confused when they heard that *titles* should be in quotation marks, and thought names were a kind of title.

  19. Something I find somewhat irritating is that some people feel the need to put quotes around the names of pet animals. I find it highly disrespectful; their names are every bit as valid as anyone’s. Imagine hearing the latest news from “Hili” – outrageous!

    1. I always hear the inner voice of Eric Idle reading the unnecessarily quoted words as the guy in their Nudge Nudge sketch:

      So your wife, is she a “goer”? Does she “go”? Know what I mean, nudge nudge, say no more!”

  22. For some great laughs do a google image search for “suspicious quotation mark signs”. Some highlights include:

    Fresh “Crabs”

    All You Can Eat “Fish”

    Employee Must “Wash Hands”

    Professional “Massage”

    “Come” “Worship” With Us at the “Gazebo”

    Budweiser “Beer” Now Available

    Donations for “Haiti”

    And my personal favorite: “SECURITY GUARD” (photo shows sleeping guard inside kiosk)

  23. I’ve often wondered (but not enough to google it) if there is a grammatical difference between single quotation marks (“‘”) and double quotation marks (“””}. I know I didn’t need the parentheses and quotations, but couldn’t resist.

    1. You did msnage to resist superfluou’s apostrophe’s😁

      I seem to think thst Americans and Brits have different rules for “” vs. ” but can’t remember what they are.

    2. Not really; it’s just a type-setters’ preference. Brits preferred single quotation marks; Americans double quotes. But I find that double quotation marks are now the rule, rather than the exception, possibly because the American convention was enshrined in computer languages…? They’re also less likely to be confused with apostrophes.

      ‘Hello,’ she said.

      “Hello,” she said.

      The only grammatical rule I know is that they should alternate in nested quotations.

      He said, ‘I waved at her. “Hello,“ she said.’

      He said, “I waved at her. ‘Hello,’ she said.”

      /@

  24. A fellow named Deepak S. in Chatworth, CA notes receiving similar correspondence on his Yelp review of the CKGS Application Centre San Francisco.

  25. I suspect that these are formal steps in a mapped out administration process – to track each stage of an application.

  26. My favourite was when I received a magnet from my workplace for a “confidential” “service” to do with counselling. So I wasn’t really confidential or a service. I still have the magnet on my fridge even though I got it 3 jobs & 15 or so years ago.

  28. I once had a manager who did that, along with random capitalisation, verbing nouns and excessive acronyms. I deeply regret that I never preserved his emails. I’ll try and recreate the flavour of one:

    As per “S&V Committee” memo of Mon Sep 21 1983, “George Smith” will a.s.a.p. augment the ADF Working Party with a view to Progressing the Uptime of the “Distributed HP&C System”. He will report to the “AV Mgr” and Liaise with “Harry Sanders” to Effectualise Quality Cntrl of the 2nd Stage of “Implementation” of the CD3267 & “ISO4653” Standards in all Working Units.

    etc etc.
    He really was that bad. Like, very nearly incomprehensible.

    cr

  29. What was interesting to me is that they’re “single” quotation marks, which are usually used when a quote is embedded within another quote.

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