A Quote by William Safire

Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'

William Safire

Quote Topics

Avoid Marks Quotation

Quote Author

William Safire
American - Author
December 17, 1929 - September 27, 2009

In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.

Arthur Miller

I took ethics classes in college, and it always amazes me how they [tabloids] will blatantly say something that I did not say, in quotation marks. The first thing that we learned in ethics is that you better have it right. If you're putting quotation marks around something, it better be exactly what that person said.

Carrie Underwood

I know people are really interested in everything that the celebrities are doing, even if you don't consider yourself a "celebrity." What always would drive me crazy is - I took ethics classes in college - and it always amazes me how there would blatantly be something that I did not say in quotation marks. If you're putting quotation marks around it, it better be exactly what that person said.

Carrie Underwood

Quotation marks quotato marks! Bah!

James Joyce

What I had thought were signs of a broken educational system - the seemingly random placement of commas, the spastic syntax, the obnoxious overuse of quotation marks, the goofy misspelling of 'Jouralism' - were actually signs of the New Instantaneousness. 'Instant Jouralists' cannot be concerned with punctuation and grammar and spelling. That stuff just 'slows you down.' To be an 'Instant Jouralist,' you have to write as if you were being pursued by a cheetah across the Serengeti.

Nicholas G. Carr

Liberals dispute that Reagan won the Cold War on the basis of their capacity to put mocking quotation marks around the word, won. That's pretty much the full argument: Restate a factual proposition with sneering quote marks.