Air Quotes Girl: A Lesson in Punctuation - Neil G. Gordon
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“ Air Quotes Girl:
A Lesson in Punctuation
Neil G. Gordon“
After the end of a long relationship, I decided to start dating using an online personals
website. Though asking women out through cyberspace wasn’t the most romantic
tactic I could think of, it protected me from a number of issues one might encounter
while trying to date in New York City. With online personals, my intentions with women
would be clear and would spare me the awkwardness of feeling like a predator at a
bar or in a yoga class. I would know that the woman was single, and could also put my
funniest foot forward when writing out my profile. I could go into each date knowing
that it was, in fact, a date, and not an ambiguous meeting with a potential friend or
business contact.
What this process didn’t prepare me for, however, was Air Quotes Girl.
Her handle was HappyChick318. She was laughing in most of her photos,
suggesting that she knew how to have fun. She worked for a non-profit organization
and was passionate about its mission. And, when the profile template asked her to state
which celebrity she resembled most, she didn’t just name one or two people that some-
one declared to her on the street. Instead, she wrote out the following dialogue:
MY BOSS: You know who you remind me of?
ME: Who?
MY BOSS: You ever see the movie Traffic?
ME: Uh, sure.
MY BOSS: Well, you know the teenage girl in that movie?
ME: You mean the one that whores herself out for heroin?
MY BOSS: Yeah, you totally look like her!
Of course I had to write her, as how many people compose dialogue for their online
profile and also do it well? After a brief correspondence, we decided to meet.
It was clear to me within seconds of meeting her that this girl had more nervous
energy than anyone I had ever met. Though she did typical nervous things, like shifting
in her seat and never making eye contact with me, the most apparent manifestation
of this energy was in her use of air quotes. She used air quotes for “everything,” even if
she didn’t “need to.” She told me “stories” about herself, and shared ideas about how
1the world “should be.” By the end of the date, I was convinced that she had used air
quotes ten or twelve times.
This was, however, only the first date, and many of us are nervous on first dates.
She was ivy-league educated, seemed to have a lot of interests, and wanted to be of
service to the world. It was entirely possible that if we were to meet a second time she
would have calmed down. I asked her to dinner, and we met once again.
She was still very nervous: She shifted in her seat, and she never made eye contact
with me.
She also used air quotes seventeen times.
MISUSING QUOTES
Unique though this experience may have been for me, Air Quotes Girl is not alone in her
abuse of this form of punctuating nonfiction communication. I don’t think I’ve ever read
an unedited manuscript that didn’t pepper half the pages with self-conscious quota-
tion marks.
A nutritionist once submitted a proposal to me and instructed his readers to
avoid white flour and white sugar in their diets:
Refined flours and sugars are stripped of all of their essential nutri-
ents, leaving only chemicals and empty calories “in their dust.” This
kind of processing turns this food into “fake food,” and creates car-
bohydrates that are so easily broken down that they “spike” blood
glucose levels. This erratic activity in the bloodstream reduces the
body’s ability to process food efficiently and can lead to weight gain
or other health problems.
Many people use quotation marks to convey their awareness of self-perpetuated irony.
Some do so in conversations with others, like Air Quotes Girl, and some do so through
the written word, like the nutritionist. In using quotation marks to acknowledge one’s
2“
own use of irony or slang, the writer or speaker is apologizing for the word choice they
have made. Using quotation marks in this way distances the reader from
understanding the author’s intended meaning. The Chicago Manual of Style (15th
edition) calls this use of quotation marks “scare quotes,” and defines it thus:
Quotation marks are often used to alert readers that a term is used
in a nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense. Nicknamed “scare
quotes,” they imply, “This is not my term” or “this is not how the term is
usually applied.” Like any such device, scare quotes lose their force
and irritate readers if overused. (293)
In The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, Kenneth G. Wilson states the
following:
(Quotation marks are used to) enclose words or phrases
quoted from others or words that may be slang or that are in some
other way being used peculiarly…But be sparing: Most editors dis-
courage the use of such quotation marks for effect rather than for a
substantive reason, and overuse of these marks in any writing is
affected. (356)
The Reference Handbook of Grammar and Usage expresses its position of using quotes
in this way as follows:
It is rarely a good idea to enclose in quotation marks words or
phrases that seem a little informal or slangy for the context. If a
word is appropriate, using it requires no apology; if it isn’t appropri-
ate, it should not be used at all. … Quotation marks are occasion-
ally used to indicate sarcasm or irony. But a too frequent use of this
device is considered a mark of weak, amateurish writing and should
be avoided. (214)
3Each of these manuals states in their own way that while not being grammatically in-
correct, scare quotes rarely and possibly never add substance to any piece of writing.
In the case of the nutritionist, his writing would benefit from the removal of all of these
quotation marks. In the case of Air Quotes Girl, her dialogue might have benefited from
a little less caffeine.
HOW TO AVOID SCARE QUOTES
There are several factors one can consider when looking to avoid the use of scare
quotes in their writing or speech. Here, we will focus on three of these factors as a start-
ing point for removing them from our communication toolbox:
1. Formality: What if the words in quotes are accurate but too informal or slangy?
2. Accuracy: What if the words in quotes convey the wrong meaning altogether?
3. Appropriateness: What if the words in quotes are accurate and deliver the proper
amount of informality to the text?
Let us look at the nutritionist’s passage on white flour and sugar to explore these
three factors.
Formality. In the case of “in their dust,” the nutritionist is using scare quotes to
apologize for the informal nature of his chosen words. If one assumes that leaving some-
one or something “in their dust” is known by the common reader to mean that they’re
leaving that someone or something behind, then there isn’t anything inaccurate about
the statement. A nutritionally conscious person will certainly want to consider the con-
sequences of eating food that is filled with little else beyond empty calories and chemi-
cals. This text, however, is intended to be a resource for readers to develop better food
choices in their diet, and the informality of the phrase “in their dust” could undermine
the author’s credibility.
The nutritionist can then choose to replace “in their dust” with a less formal
phrase that means the same thing. Right now, the sentence reads:
4“ Refined flours and sugars are stripped of all of their essential nutrients,
leaving only chemicals and empty calories “in their dust.”
A less casual term than “in their dust” can be “in their wake.” A “wake” can be any
track or course of a procession,1 and extending that course to a process of foodstuff
isn‘t too great a departure from the word‘s original meaning. While the nutritionist could
choose to restructure the sentence entirely and construct a different way for the refin-
ing process to inform these nutritionally diminished results, this use of the term “in their
wake” can enliven the text for a more engaging read. The instruction, then, would be
to remove the quotation marks and replace “dust” with “wake.”
Accuracy: In the case of “fake food,” the nutritionist is apologizing for the impre-
cision of the term, as substances that are consumable and/or of a caloric composition
are not in any way fake. The classification of “fake food” belongs to objects that resem-
ble food but can in no way be consumed: bowls of wax fruit and the plastic cupcakes
used by bakery-themed dolls to prepare for their imaginary customers.
I would instruct the nutritionist to replace the term “fake food” with words that
describe the actual results of the refining process. Instead of writing “This kind of pro-
cessing turns this food into ‘fake food,’” he would write, “This process removes this
food’s most beneficial nutritional properties, and creates carbohydrates…” Though this
choice of words may be dry in comparison its quoted predecessor, it serves the accu-
racy of the text overall.
Appropriateness: In the case of “spike,” the nutritionist is using scare quotes to
apologize for the more informal nature of his word choice, like in his use of the phrase
“in their dust.” How, then, does this situation distinguish itself from the other? “In their
dust” was slangy to the point of distracting the reader from the intended meaning of
the phrase, and its informality didn’t add any color to the overall text. The term “spike,”
while accepted in some dictionaries as being a sharp increase or rise,2 is not accepted
in others.3 This ambiguity may have been the nutritionist’s inspiration for using scare
quotes, and whether “spike” is a formal term or not, it requires no apology. I would
instruct the nutritionist to remove the quotes and not make any other changes. To do so
would not diminish the value of his writing in any way.
5If we were to look at the nutritionist’s passage with these corrections, it would read
as such:
Refined flours and sugars are stripped of all of their essential nutrients,
leaving only chemicals and empty calories in their wake. This process
removes this food’s most beneficial nutritional properties, and cre-
ates carbohydrates that are so easily broken down that they spike
blood glucose levels. This erratic activity in the bloodstream reduces
the body’s ability to process food efficiently and can lead to weight
gain or other health problems.
Apologies serve no purpose in nonfiction communication, and to do so is to sell one’s
words short.
QUOTING WITHOUT APOLOGY
The primary purpose of quotation marks in nonfiction communication, be it spoken or
written, is to set apart precise and exact language from the other text. Whether they
are used for citing the exact words someone has written or spoken, or for citing the title
of a song, article, or other minor creative work, quotation marks can be an effective
way to build one’s credibility and precision when communicating. Anything in excess of
that use, however, weakens one’s writing and should be avoided at all costs.
***
I didn’t go on a third date with Air Quotes Girl. If I was able to spend my evening with
her counting the number of times she used air quotes instead of actually listening to
what she said, then there wasn’t anything for me to salvage in seeing her again. I felt
bad about this, as she did seem like a kind person, so it was important that I not blow
her off. I wrote her an email the next day and told her I didn’t think it would work for us.
6“
She didn’t write back.
I told this story to co-workers. I was sharing the entry level with them at a large
book publishing company at the time, and one friend gave her reaction:
“You know when she got that email from you, she went and told her friends, ‘I
went out on a “date” with this “editorial assistant” who said we “didn’t have the right
chemistry.”’”
Indeed, my friend had poor Air Quotes Girl pegged. And if this was what she said
to her friends after receiving my email, that last quote, “didn’t have the right chemistry,”
would have been the first time she had used quotation marks correctly.
For that’s exactly what my email had said.
1
Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary
2
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spike
3
Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary
Bibliography
Chicago Manual of Style, The (15th Edition). Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 2003.
Perrin, Porter G. Reference Handbook of Grammar and Usage. New York: William
Morrow & Company, Inc., 1972
Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary (Second Edition). New York: William
Collins Publishers, 1979
Wilson, Kenneth G. Columbia Guide to Standard American English. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993
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