Writing, Clear and Simple

I’ve never understood why some people just don’t get the purpose of quotation marks—after all, the name says it all, doesn’t it? They’re called quotation marks because you use them to indicate quotations.

 Apparently, it doesn’t say it clearly or loudly enough, judging from some of the examples of quotation mark misuse displayed on The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

For example, why did someone feel it necessary to enclose the article a in quotation marks?

I could become deeply depressed over the sorry state of things, when so many people fail to understand something as basic as quotation marks. But just think of the opportunities it creates for people who take even a little care in their writing.

Police: Crack Found in Man’s Buttocks

“Well, where else would you expect to find it?”

You can’t say that headline writers have no sense of humor. It may be juvenile, but they do have one. 

If you are involved in publishing something that includes text in more than one language, be sure to have people who are native speakers of those languages double-check the text. Otherwise, you may end up with something like this:

(Click to view full size image) This is a page in a quilting book that I found in a area fabric store; I took the photo with my cell phone. (My wife was looking for something to make some valances, and I was along to offer opinions.) I believe the book was published in Japan; most of the text didn’t use the Latin alphabet. I’m pretty sure that the authors of the text meant to call the designs on these pages “Stained Glass,” and not “Stained Grass,” because they were reminiscent of the decorative stained glass windows one finds in Victorian-era houses. I have no idea if there’s any such thing as “stained grass.” I can’t recall hearing or reading the phrase before, much less in the context of quilt designs.

I’m not really sure, though. Maybe “stained grass” is a phrase that’s meaningful in Japan. However, it doesn’t mean much to me. If that’s what they really meant, then maybe it should have been translated into something more culturally relevant in English-speaking countries.

In either case, if a native English speaker had proofread this text before the book was published, he or she could have raised the issue and gotten things clarified.  As it is, well, I got a good chuckle from it.

(It reminds me of some of the scenes in the movie Lost in Translation, with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Murray’s character, Bob Harris, continually has trouble understanding what people are saying to him because they keep getting the L and R sounds mixed up.)

Related: “Don’t get lost in translation.” 

I was browsing one of my old notebooks (I carry a pocket Moleskine to capture ideas, snatches of conversation, observations, and whatever strikes my fancy), and ran across a portmanteau word of my own devising: confrontarian, which is a combination of contrarian and confront. I define it as someone who likes to confront people with his contrariness.

Just to be sure, I used Google to search for any instances of this word in English, and found only one case where someone was apparently using it as a nickname. (It is also a Spanish word, “the third-person plural of confrontar in the conditional,” according to Wiktionary.)

So here, free of charge, is my gift to the English language: The new and useful word confrontarian.

Following up on my article “10 Tips for Effective E-mail,” here’s Stephen Colbert interviewing Will Schwalbe, co-author of Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home.

Schwalbe also has a great blog all about e-mail, and he’s looking for people’s e-mail horror stories. Check it out.

(Yes, I know that I have e-mail hyphenated and they don’t. That’s not a matter of right or wrong, that’s a style preference. I don’t care which one you use, just pick one and stick with it.)