Rescue Those Floating Quotation Marks this “Summer”

Memorial Day marked the unofficial start of summer. (The summer solstice begins June 21 this year.)

Beach season is upon us. Coconut-scented sunscreen, captivating chick-lit books, Coronas, bikinis, and — for the parents who are reading this — swim diapers and those cute little floaties we use to keep our toddlers save when they swim and splash.

Floats are good. Root beer floats. Floating in a life raft (with the aforementioned Corona tucked safely in its little mesh cup holder), floating boats, floating … well, floats. But if there’s one type of floating you want to avoid this summer (eww… what are you thinking?) it’s floating quotation marks.

Floating quotation marks are quotation marks we put around a word or phrase even if the words are not something someone said. We may use floating quotation marks to:

• Set apart slang words in our writing
• Set apart a phrase that is an exact quote, if the words around it are paraphrased
• Emphasize a point
• Spotlight sarcasm or irony
• Or otherwise draw attention to a word for some reason.

“Stop it!”

See what I did there? I used random quotation marks to draw attention to my statement. Did you wonder, “What is she doing, tossing quotation marks ‘willy-nilly’ into her work?”

I did it again, this time to emphasize that “willy-nilly” is a slang phrase.

We don’t need quotation marks for these reasons, however. Slang phrases are easily recognizable, as is sarcasm. (Or it should be).

If a word or words represent an exact quote, you have a legitimate reason to use floating quotation marks. But if the expression is not completely unique — and the words around it are all paraphrased — you don’t need the quotation marks.

Don’t need quotation marks: He called the movie “excellent!”
Should use quotation marks: He called the movie “the most amazing example of cinematic excellence since Avatar.”

Since it’s entirely up to the writer to determine whether a phrase is unique and quote-worthy or simply some run-of-the-mill words, you can see where confusion about floating quotation marks arises.

If you’re wondering whether or not you need quotation marks, you probably don’t. Readers notice quotation marks — after all, writers use them to call attention to a phrase. You won’t go wrong by leaving them out, because people are less apt to notice their absence.

When to use floating quotation marks can be a matter of some debate. But I don’t think any writer will disagree that the floaters used in these signs, spotlighted in The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, are just wrong, wrong, wrong.