SOMEBODY HAS TO "DO" IT

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks

("Thanks" to Larry Martell)

Comments

[Siouxie]

"wow"

[judi]

so "wonderfully" snarky. geek blog's: where would "we" be without *em*!!!

[Punkin]

I don't "get" it.

What is the "point"?

OUCH!

I sprained my "air quote" fingers.

[Siouxie]

*I* don't "know", judi!

"Geeks" can be "funny" too "!"

[Punkin]

Mornin' Siouxie!!

How "are" you, today?

[Siouxie]

Mornin' "BFF"!!

[The Dread Pirate Chris]

The best part of my "day" is when Dread "Jr" completely missuses his finger-quotes"."

[gjd]

It "looks" like folks are using quotes because they "don't" know how to do italics .

[Allen at Division]

"I will 'slay' them all!" --Conan the Grammarian

[Guin]

"Excellent" blog.

[Meanie the Blue]

Please note that there is now an acute shortage of quotation marks, so please use them (sparingly). As someone famous once said /I Am Not Making This Up\.

[oneblankspace]

And dont miss the link's to the other blog's, like Apostrophe Abuse.

[Meanie the Blue]

A similar issue came up many months ago on a different thread, and if you will allow me, I would like to re-post a comment from there:

While I am fully in favor of conserving asterisks, it is a comma misperception that conservation alone can solve the looming crisis over the world's dwindling punctuation resources. In this digital age, with its information-based economy, demands for periods, commas, asterisks and graphical symbols of all kinds can be expected to increase exponentially. Social trends such as text messaging, the already-disturbing and ever-widening barrage of sp@m, the trend toward shorter and more frequent posting on blogs, and the media celebrity-driven leap in the abuse of exclamation points, make it clear that a shortage of quality punctuation and graphic symbols has the potential to grind our standard of living into the dust and social and economic progress in developing countries to a screeching halt. Unless radical steps are taken, these developments will result in severe supply bottlenecks and soaring prices. Spot shortages in the @ symbol have already wreaked havoc in the Pacific Northwest and California, and are threatening to disable communications in less stable regions around the world.

What can be done about this impending disaster?

Certainly, conservation has a role to play. Higher words-per-punctuation unit standards can help to phase in an era of gradually increasing efficiency. Curbs on punctuation abuse can be easily implemented in popular digital devices to, say, limit the number of exclamation points in a message or post about Britney Spe@rs to no more than three per sentence. The technology exists to place blocks on unnecessary terms such as ", like, " to reduce the consumption of superfluous commas.

But the real answer to stabilizing prices and ensuring an adequate resource supply is to increase production while avoiding undue reliance on unstable foreign sources. Synthetic semicolons are already being manufactured in Europe with technology that is reproducible in this country. Experimental, small-scale ampersand farms are quietly producing high-quality output in the open spaces of the Midwest and show promise for economical large-scale applications. Asterisk beds off the mid-Atlantic and Gulf coasts are waiting to be explored and exploited, and techniques for safe and environmentally conscious extraction are available. With sufficient trade incentives and cooperative installation of high-capacity pipelines and rail lines, a steady flow of crude quotes, unrefined ellipses, low-grade equal signs, and dash ore can be streaming across our borders from abundant fields in Mexico and Canada. Of course, a major increase in refinery capacity will be needed to process these materials into products suitable for transmission through our digital equipment.

What it will take to implement such measures is the courage of our political leaders to stand up to the multi-nationals of Big Punctuation and the Organization of Punctuation Exporting Countries, both of whom are awash in profits from the high prices imposed by the current market situation, and to force them into recognizing, for their own self-interests as well as that of the citizens of our nation and the world, that time is running out and the gravy train is heading for derailment over a deep chasm.

Write the President, your Senators, your Congressmen and your state and local legislators to demand that they take action now. Make your voices heard in protests, information campaigns, and demonstrations. It's your future - Get off your asterisk!

Thank you for your indulgence.

[Siouxie]

Who posted that, CJ??

[Meanie the Blue]

Yours truly.

[bethany]

Thanks for the link, Dave. I am a huge fan of your work and therefore geeking out.

[whatsinaname]

I "laughed" "out loud" "several" times. (Translation: I chuckled quietly to myself one time.) How does anyone find this blog on her own? Thank you, DBB, for adding even more trivial "knowledge" to my life.

[Siouxie]

Very nicely said, Meanie. If only I "({[understood]})" what you said.

[insomniac]

makes me think of chris farley's character bennett brauer

[DeskDiva]

See what you did, Meanie?

[DeskDiva]

Also - he's "geeking out" that Dave recognized his blog!

[Siouxie]

"Whoa!"

Who moved "the blog"???

[DeskDiva]

Oops - maybe that's a she....

[DeskDiva]

LOL - That was Meanie. I moved it back. :-)

[Meanie the Blue]

Ironic that it was an incomplete blockquote tag that caused that.

[Siouxie]

"very"

[Layzeeboy]

Great. Another "blog" I have to check out every day. Thanks a "lot", Dave.

[Coconuts]

"Chuckling" to myself. Great blog.

[Annie Where-but-here]

jeez, Meanie - how many trees did you kill to make that post?

[john heins]

deskdiva - SHE'S geeking out that he linked to her blog ;P

I was a fan of that blog before she hit the big time! It's nice to see a success story like that though.

[" "]

" "

[laurie ruettimann]

I'm a big fan of Bethany Kelley & I'm so glad you think she's great.

[Tommy]

I really "love" the "link" to this "blog", it's hilarious! "Thanks" Dave!!

BATMAN FAN? Visit The Bat-Blog!
http://www.bat-blog.com

Tommy was here :)

[perLite]

Just where would we be without geek blog's, Judi? Thank goodness I can go here:

http://www.apostropheabuse.com/

perL