"Nice"

One summer weekend, I found myself exploring a small town in Maine. Oddly, almost every store in town featured a sign in the window that included unnecessary quotation marks.

I'm referring to the phenomenon by which people inexplicably use quotation marks to emphasize something.

The local diner sold "FRESH" PIES. The bank was giving away "FREE" TOTE BAGS. And they were perpetually celebrating their high school football "CHAMPIONS."

The best we could figure is that they all had the same sign maker. Perhaps there was some grammatically misguided person with really good handwriting who was hired by all the local businesses and the school to make the signs.

The result was a whole "town" filled with "unnecessary" quotation marks.

We decided to interpret the quotation marks as meaning "it's as though they were..."

For example, it's as though the pies were fresh. It's as though the tote bags were free. It's as though the team were champions.

Ever since that day, I've applied the "it's as though they were" rule to unnecessary quotation marks, bringing me internal joy instead of the tooth-grinding that usually accompanies grammatical gaffes.

Imagine my joy when I found this website: The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

Now I don't need to travel to a remote corner of Maine to inundate myself with "it's as though they were" situations. Awesome!