What exactly do scare quotes do?

Question

According to Wikipedia:- Scare quotes are (also called shudder quotes, sneer quotes, and quibble marks) are quotation marks that writers place around a word or phrase to signal that they are using it in an ironic, referential, or otherwise non-standard sense. Scare quotes may indicate that the author is using someone else's term, similar to preceding a phrase with the expression "so-called"; they may imply skepticism or disagreement, belief that the words are misused, or that the writer intends a meaning opposite to the words enclosed in quotes. Whether quotation marks are considered scare quotes depends on context because scare quotes are not visually different from actual quotations. The use of scare quotes is highly discouraged in formal or academic writing.I'm not sure what the aforementioned explanation is trying to say regarding scare quotes.Edit:  Changed 'does' to 'do' in header.  CJ

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

reptaxI'm not sure what the aforementioned explanation is trying to say regarding scare quotes.

It's clear enough. I'm not sure what you want. Quotation marks have many standard uses, and you would have to have learned those before you could tackle scare quotes. Have you done that?

Some examples:

My son "cleaned" his room today, which means he kicked his dirty underwear under the bed and ate the rest of the pizza on his nightstand from last night. (He told me he cleaned it. He obviously defines the word differently from me.)

Crysis 2 is fully "optimized", in other words, darker with less texture. (The company calls it optimized. I don't think so.)

Susie got sent home from school yesterday because her clothes were a little too "summery". (She was showing a lot of skin, but we couldn't put "like a streetwalker" in the note to her mom.)

What exactly do scare quotes do?

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