Although the phrase scare quotes has been around for a long time I’ve only just recently become aware of it, and I like it more than I probably should.
Most sources, including Wikipedia, attribute it to British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, who used it in a 1956 article called Aristotle and the Sea Battle. The philosophers amongst my readers will know immediately what the article was about; for everyone else, let me tell you now it is not a seafaring tale of blood-letting by angry men in togas.
But Anscombe was far from the first person to use the phrase. It also appears in a 1946 book by Carey McWilliams called Southern California: An Island on the Land, and was likely in use before that too.
Scare quotes is a much more engaging name for quotation marks used to indicate an unusual or inaccurate use that the writer wants to distance themselves from. For example, if someone writes about “global warming” as opposed to global warming, you can be confident they’re sceptical about the whole business and regard the phrase as dubious. The last thing they’d want is for the unsuspecting reader to tar them with the same brush as almost every credible climate scientist on the planet.
People have been grappling with how to indicate scepticism, sarcasm and irony almost from the day writing was invented. The ancient Greeks used a device called a diple (or διπλῆ), which simply means double. They’d pop one in the margin of a text to draw attention to anything they deemed noteworthy, including, presumably, that which was risible.
Three dotted diples. The diple marked a text as noteworthy. The number and placement of the dots may have provided more specific information about why the text was noteworthy.
Students of French will recognise these symbols, which later became the guillemet (« and »), used instead of quotation marks in French writing.
In the ensuing years, various devices were employed by writers of every language, with little consistency. The invention of the printing press put a gradual stop to that, as it did to the wild westiness of spelling. The key word, however, is “gradual” - by one account, Shakespeare’s name had over 20 alternative spellings between 1563 and 1616. What’s more, it was not unheard of for the same writer, including the great man himself, to play around with different options.
By the late 18th century, the printing profession had largely settled on pairs of inverted commas, which you and I know as quotation marks, as the way to indicate quoted text. Since then, single inverted commas have become almost as acceptable, although many publishers reserve their use for indirect, or reported, speech.
One of the great advantages of inverted commas is that they make explicit, in a way that scratches in the margin don’t, where the quoted text begins and ends. One of their great disadvantages is that they make it possible for people to perform air quotes, which really should be a hanging offence.
Scare quotes, let me stress, are not quotation marks. The latter indicate quoted text. The former, though they look identical, indicate text from which the writer wishes to distance themselves. Other terms are shudder quotes, sneer quotes and quibble marks.
To my mind, scare quotes are like laxatives. Use them sparingly and probably little harm will follow. But the line between sparing and extravagant is fine indeed, and the consequences of crossing it may be too unfortunate to contemplate.
My view is shared by US cultural critic Greil Marcus, who calls scare quotes “the enemy” and an assault by the writer on his or her own words. I would add that their overuse is lazy - a poor substitute for saying what the writer actually thinks, or maybe even a substitute for doing any real thinking at all.
One issue with using them is that it often forces the reader to guess what the writer’s view on the matter really is. Are they being ironic? Sceptical? Other?
Or are they practising writing restaurant menus which often seem to regard the inverted apostrophe as a threatened species, and themselves as the One Called Upon by Destiny to snatch them from oblivion’s clutches by sprinkling them liberally about the place like so many chocolate sprinkles, often in locations that leave the customer wondering what they’re actually ordering. Consider these doozies:
Our chili is “homemade.”
All burgers are cooked “medium.”
Our bread is baked “fresh”.
Does this mean the careful writer should avoid scare quotes altogether? Poe’s law suggests that might be going too far. Coined in 2005 specifically for online forums, it holds that “without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.” In this age of tribalism, extremism, and hair-trigger offence-taking, the need to be make sure no one thinks you’re agreeing with that which you are satirising is surely even greater than it was in 2005.
Unfortunately, Poe’s law has since become a hiding place for internet trolls who post hateful comments while simultaneously - and disingenuously - distancing themselves from them. “Did you not get the irony,” they seem to be suggesting, “when I suggested that every member of this group I hate should be killed?” (As a rule, the answer is “no, we did not”.)
On a lighter note, let me end by telling you what Aristotle and the Sea Battle is really about. It starts with the commonly held view that human beings have free will. Now imagine, said Aristotle, that a sea battle will not be fought tomorrow. In that case, it was true yesterday that the battle will not be fought, and the day before that, and so on. In that case, it is not and never was possible that the battle will be fought, your free will, vast naval force and equally willing, seafaring enemy notwithstanding. It follows, then, that free will is an illusion.
Philosophers, including Elizabeth Anscombe, have been grappling with this problem for centuries. Summarising the current state of play is well above my pay grade, but hats off to Aristotle for thinking up a problem that’s still exercising some of the best minds in the world.
Even if he had no “choice” about whether to think it up or not.
Bits and specious
The ancient Greeks didn’t actually wear togas. They wore lots of other things though, including, on special occasions, their birthday suits.
Elizabeth Anscombe was not afraid of taking a position on issues of the day. She was an outspoken critic of Britain's entry into WWII and objected to Oxford University granting an honorary degree to Harry Truman following his order to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In her later life (after converting to Catholicism), she supported the church’s opposition to contraception and got arrested for protesting outside an abortion clinic.
Quote of the week
Silence is not only golden, it is seldom misquoted.
Bob Monkhouse