A Word Please

A Word, Please By June Casagrande I can't make a decent egg foo yong to save my life. I can't pave a sidewalk, repair a computer or dry clean a suit. And you sure as heck don't want me to groom your poodle. So who am I to tell people with all these skills and more how to use quotation marks in their business signs?

June Casagrande In the more than three years that I've been writing this column, never once have I been tempted to write about the errant quotation marks you see around words like "free," "special," "please" and "exit" and "crab meat."

Besides, there are plenty of people already doing this for me - many of them so bitter they can leave taste in the mouth to rival my own egg foo yong.

"I'm tempted to carry around a camera with me all the time, if only to document the ridiculous grammar that people use on signs - signs that are ready by a great amount of people every day," wrote Mike, a blogger at Arsenic.net. No, you're not seeing things. Mike wrote, "signs that are ready by a great amount of people" instead of "signs that are read." I frequently search the Internet for stuff like this and it's more common than not to find embarrassing typos in rants complaining about other peoples' typos. I suspect it's some primal instinct embedded deep in our brains that helps keep our snootiness in check and thereby saves us from strutting around like we own the jungle in front of a pack of hungry tigers. (Note: Please add to the above list of things I cannot do: "develop plausible theories of human evolution.) Still, with a prompting by Dave in Burbank, it occurs to me that maybe - just maybe - an egg foo yong chef or a sidewalk paver or a dry cleaner or a dog groomer could read this column and benefit from a quick primer on quotation marks. Quotation marks, the things around "hey" in this sentence, are usually used to signify the exact words someone spoke or wrote. Paris Hilton said, "A right triangle is the same as the area of the square whose sides equal to the hypotenuse: a2+b2=c2." (Or was that Jessica Simpson? I can't remember.) You get the idea. In newspapers, quotation marks are also used with things like movie titles and song titles - things for which books use italics but because newspaper printing systems traditionally lacked the ability to make italics, the quotation marks were used instead. I sang "The Star Spangled Banner." Note that, in American English,

periods and commas always go inside quotation marks, while the placement of question marks and exclamation points depends on whether they apply to the whole sentence or to the quoted matter only. But while these basic uses of quotation marks are pretty straightforward, two entries in the "Associated Press Stylebook" point to the source of all the confusion. The first entry to note is the entry titled "unfamiliar terms." It reads, "A word or words being introduced to readers may be placed in quotation marks on first reference": The tuft of hair on the back of a horse's ankle is known as a "fetlock." This explains why a restaurateur might see fit to put quotation marks around "egg foo yong" or even "special." But here's where this gets ironic: AP also explains that quotation marks can be used to designate irony. Try our "scrumptious" egg foo yong, therefore, could be using quotation marks to identify a word used by a restaurant critic or to introduce a word the sign maker doubts customers know. But most likely, the quotation marks around "scrumptious" will be read in that last sense - ironically - suggesting you'd be better off eating at the poodle groomer's. June Casagrande is author of "Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies." She can be reached at word@grammarsnobs.com.