I'm about 90% certain those are discretionary quotation marks.

Laura Lee? What do you think?

There's a sign down on the boardwalk in Ocean City with misplaced quotes.

It reads:

NY Style "Pizza".

Some people seem to use quotes for emphasis like boldface or italics. It drives me nuts, too.

This very thing drives me nuts. A friend tried to explain to me that they were emphasis quotation marks. There is no such thing!

My favourite example of this was the signs that bloomed all over a friend's rural Ohio county after 9-11. It read;

Pray to "God" for our troops!

I can't help but read that as something like, "Pray to the so-called God for our troops."

Bucky -- does that mean that diner discretion is advised?

There is no such thing as discretionary quotes. They are just wrong.

It's a really common misuse of quotes for emphasis often called grocer's or green grocer's quotes. Didn't we go over this at length already? Maybe on McIntyre's blog. Goofy people use them to call attention to something as if they were underlining or bolding.

It used to drive me batsh@t crazy (I know, short trip) every time I saw the sign in front of Amicci's in Little Italy that said A "VERY" Casual Eatery. Plus "Very" was also in RED while the rest of the text was in black. With so much irony and emphasis being placed on one word I always imagined it to be pants-optional (which it is not) or something crazier. Because seriously, "casual" in Baltimore is already pretty close to sauna attire.

In the demented mind of the quote abuser it makes the word dessert more "special".

And now, how about delis that have "soup" for .99¢

I "totally" do that!

whenever I see "food names" in quotation marks I think that it means that they are faux representatives of the "pizza" or "dessert". Like the place is saying "not real pizza but our version of it" or "not real dessert but something like it". I dunno, maybe it's just me...

"Exactly" right Joyce. We use only the "freshet" ingredients! If a restaurant owner can't see the downside of "randomly" placing quotation marks on the menu... kind of makes you wonder. Try our hand-made "Corn" Chowder!

There is no such thing as discretionary quotes.

No, I'm pretty sure I read, over in the Parlour, that you can have required punctuation or you can have discretionary punctuation. Let's see if I can remember correctly--it was pretty complicated and Prof. McIntyre even had an honest-to-god-English teacher disagreeing with him about it.

Required punctuation is punctuation that is utilized strictly according to grammar rules handed down from generation to generation and hardly ever changed.

Discretionary punctuation is punctuation that is used to make the writing more readable and understandable. So, for example, some discretionary punctuation makes the writing mimic the cadence of conversation.

Man, I wish the Professor was here to explain this.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the quotation marks EL found are discretionary ones, and the menu writer probably meant them to create an emphasis on the word dessert, the way your server would sort of whisper it seductively if he/she was asking, "Would y'all like dessert?" and sort of enticing you with the concept of pie ala mode.

Very "astute" Joyce "W"

I kinda think the "desserts" they're offering are more than just cake and pie. You might be led into a back room to partake of your "dessert".

"Bing!" Right on schedule.

Discretionary indeed.

This type of use of quotation marks has the same effect on me as a wink from Sarah Palin or Michelle Obama.

Required punctuation is punctuation that is utilized strictly according to grammar rules handed down from generation to generation and hardly ever changed.

Discretionary punctuation is punctuation that is used to make the writing more readable and understandable. So, for example, some discretionary punctuation makes the writing mimic the cadence of conversation.

No, no, no! First off, most punctuation has never truly standardised. For an example, see the comma. Secondly, there is no such thing as "discretionary" punctuation. There is wrong punctuation and there is correct punctuation, in several different styles.

Calling gratuitous quotation marks "discretionary" is like saying that non-standard English is equal to and as acceptable as standard English. When writing in dialect, an author is likely to use non-standard grammar and spelling with a little non-standard punctuation sprinkled in, but how does using quotation marks for emphasis count as writing in dialect?

Most of us switch between several different registers of English. However, the written language has always been more formal than the spoken language. Attempting to invent informal registers of written English shows a shocking lack of knowledge of the history of English and how it changes.

Um...I feel pretty strongly about this.

I kinda think the "desserts" they're offering are more than just cake and pie. You might be led into a back room to partake of your "dessert".

I get a little squirmy when Friendly's advertises their "happy ending" sundaes.
http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2005/07/is_friendlys_be.html

Of course, I still chuckle every time I hear Sally Field talk about once-a-month Boniva.

Um...I feel pretty strongly about this.

That makes you a prescriptivist, if I understand it correctly. I mean that in a good way.

Thanks, EL, for providing the link to the extraneous-quote-mark website. I've been complaining for years to whoever would listen to me about this very thing. I didn't know there was a website.

EL, I enjoy your blog. Yet, you complain about quotes while publishing a sentence like this:

"But, much as I would like to, I can't ignore the fact that Tuesday week is March 17, the actual St. Patrick's Day."

Go figure.

The other explanation for these quotation marks is that e e cummings is now doing copy editing for menus.

No discretionary quotations marks. Quotation marks indicate when you are directly quoting someone. They are not a mark of emphasis. Period. (We have other spiffy ways to indicate emphasis.) I tend to read them like the people who have already said they wonder if it's meant to indicate that whatever is in the marks is a fake version somewhat like the real thing. Not the impression the mad quoters mean to convey, I'm sure.

Bucky, I'm a soft prescriptivist. The language will change (and should, as much as I love Anglo-Saxon), but such change needs to be balanced with the ability to communicate. And, gratuitous quotation marks for emphasis do not communicate anything except the stupidity of the writer.

The other explanation for these quotation marks is that e e cummings is now doing copy editing for menus.

that makes no sense

Lissa -- I enjoyed reading your passionate and competent defense of proper punctuation.

I'm about 90% certain that Bucky was pulling someone's leg in his initial comment to this post. He was probably lashing out in retaliation for something I had posted on "You Don't Say". Then he extrapolated a point The Professor made about discretionary commas to include all punctuation. I don't think even Bucky believes that McIntyre would ever countenance "discretionary quotes".

Keep digging that hole, Bucky.

While I can't speak for the Square State One, my immediate impression of Bucky's opening comment related to a conversation on You Don't Say and almost posted here to comment on how we are not just talking back and forth between topics here, but now we are seamlessly jumping blogs, without missing a beat. It's very funny, but, I'm sure occasional readers or newbies a) hate us for not being pure in our postings, b) confused beyond all hope, or c) hate us and want us banned.

Oh well.

Oh, OMG, e e cummings used discretionary punctuation and grammar, hence these menus that exhibit discretionary punctuation and grammar could have been edited by e e cummings. Of course cummings has been dead for 50 years, so I doubt he has been editing any menus lately.

Anthony Burgess' _A Mouthful of Air_ has a great section on punctuation. There is something delicious about learning of the rebelliousness of the comma from the author of _A Clockwork Orange_.

Thanks for the explanation, Laura Lee. Emphasis quotation marks are right up there with 133t speak and people who claim they are too artistic to burden their prose with silly things like grammar, capital letters and punctuation for sending me off the deep end.

For the sake of all the gods, don't let me get really tired, then ask me about "irregular" verbs in Modern English. No one should have to sit through that rant.

The very name discretionary punctuation implies it should be used with discretion. It rarely is.

I like to think that I broke my freshman-comp students of the habit of using quotation marks for emphasis by writing on the board, "Fred checked in to the motel with his "niece."

Bucky's right. I read about - but did not understand the reasoning behind - discretionary punctuation over in Wordville.

RtSO, you are, indeed, a nice man. My attitude toward the fact that we are frequently disorganized and confusing here is,

This is who we are. New people wi'll get used to it.

Eve, they will get used to it, or they will scratch their heads and move on.

There are ten different style books/manuals on my shelf, not counting multiple editions of the AP and NY Times stylebooks kept for historical reference. They cover American and British usage, as well as the differences, between those, plus online usage.

There's no such creature as "discretionary punctuation." At best, you have the use of asterisks as a means of emphasis in online communications where italics or underlining would be too cumbersome and possibly subject to failures in transmission.

Of course, my style books only go up to 2006, so maybe someone rewrote the books in the past two years, while also including and accounting for phone-texting abbreviations and the like..........

Alexander - Discretionary punctuation wouldn't be covered in style books. "Discretionary puntcuation" describes the acceptable exceptions to what would be documented in style books.

I was just joking about El Patron on Charles St. in Mount Vernon, which has a sign out front advertising "appetizers". They may be appetizing -- or, not.

Once more into the breach, eh Bucky?

Bucki sez:

"Alexander - Discretionary punctuation wouldn't be covered in style books. "Discretionary puntcuation" describes the acceptable exceptions to what would be documented in style books."

Translayshun:

I ken punku8 anny damm way i wanna,an itt doan madder cuz eye kin jes cawl id diskreshunaree punkuyashen.

ya se; dis cann awlso aplyy 2 spelin an writnn az wel./ ho neds stuupd stantartizd spelln{ anewa&& ovelusle not u.

Let's be honest. So-called "discretionary" grammar rules are an attempt to excuse or explain away sloppy, lackadaisical, and just plain incorrect use of a language's rules. I suppose "discretion" also applies to incorrect use of apostrophes as well? I am fully aware that languages are effectively so-called "living" concepts that are subject to change over centuries, just as, say, laws and customs change. That does not mean, however, that an individual can just decide to adopt a different standard because he or she feels like it--imagine how the world would be if people applied "discretionary law" and felt free to speed, take property, or murder.

imagine how the world would be if people applied "discretionary law" and felt free to speed, take property, or murder.

Well, if there was a risk of killing some innocent bystander with a discretionary comma, I'd be impressed by your analogy. But there isn't, so I'm not.

We do have discretionary law. That is why AIG gets a bailout, and I don't.

Que what!

Discretionary language, punctuation, and grammar in "the new global economy" macrocosm is essential for the communication disconnect required for the future.