Don't quote me on that

I've been saving this one for awhile, but I thought it would be a good post given that I used quotation marks of questionable necessity in a headline a few days ago.

Anyway, click here to check out The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. Genius...

It reminds me of a brief one of my teams wrote for the National Moot Court Competition two years ago. One of the issues was the constitutionality of a fictional firearms statute that was popularly known (in the great state of Old York) as Aidan's Law. My students chose to put quotation marks around "Aidan's Law" (see? I just did it!) every time they referenced the statute. Which, of course, was like every other sentence. The quotations accomplished two things: 1) They made the brief annoying as hell to read; and 2) they made it seem as if "Aidan's Law" (I did it again!!!) was some sort of wink-wink, B.S. statute not to be taken seriously -- not the tact you want to take when you're arguing FOR its constitutionality. The brief didn't score very well, as I recall...