Even punctuation can get lost in translation. Square brackets can be used simply for emphasis in Japanese, but have here been translated into, what English readers will no doubt recognise as, ‘scare quotes’. The translator should have used a bold font in the English version.
I wonder how long quote* marks have been used in this way? Originally designed to indicate direct speech, they now indicate someone else’s direct speech, even when that someone else isn’t referred to. In other words, by putting quote marks around a word or phrase, you can use it without really owning it, or owning up to it. While ‘scare quotes’ seems to be the phrase which has caught on to describe this phenomenon, I’ve also heard them aptly referred to as the ‘rubber gloves of punctuation’. When I see them used as anything other than a direct quote I imagine the writer holding a putrid item between forefinger and thumb, other hand pinching nose to mask a bad smell.
And this is why we need to be mindful when using them, especially in online debates, which can get heated. When disagreeing with someone’s words, to what extent do we put their ideas in speech marks when disagreeing with them? While we don’t want the ideas of others to mistaken for our own, there’s something downright hostile about donning rubber gloves before daring to pick up your interlocutor’s words. I have at times made the decision not to use scare quotes (for reasons of politeness) and subsequently had phrases not my own mistakenly attributed to me. I have typed scare quotes then removed them because it sounded too hostile. I have had my own words quoted back to me in scare quotes and felt vaguely annoyed about it, in the same way someone tries to imitate something you said by putting on a high-pitched silly voice that sounds nothing like how you actually said it.
The perils of modern punctuation. I blame the Internet. I’m adding it to the list of worries which begins with, ‘Are my sentence-final full-stops on Facebook sounding too abrupt?’
*If you still balk at ‘quote’ as a shortening of ‘quotation’, I understand. But I think we’ve got to the point where ‘quote’ is the new ‘quotation’. (Not scare quotes.)
