Thursday, February 19, 2009

Pet peeve

"I don't know the effects of Lyme disease on chimpanzees, but I will say that it's deceiving to think that if any animal is, quote-unquote, well-behaved around humans that means there is no risk involved to humans for potential outbursts of behaviour," she said.
I don't know the effects of Lyme disease on chimpanzees either, but I do know that whoever said that sentence above needs to get their head examined (in my unqualified opinion). By saying:
"quote-unquote"
she is actually quoting nothing at all, except for that hyphen. And why would you quote a hyphen?

If only she knew the so-called magic of "so-called" she could have extricated herself from this grammatical cesspool.

(By the way, you may be getting the impression that I'm totally obsessed with thinking about grammar and strange words and such things. You'd be right.)

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