“Scare” Quotes

You might have noticed that I’m a big fan of italics when writing and publishing online. Italics are ideal for this since you keep reading without much of a hitch—but you know that slanted word has a slanted meaning, so you had better raise an eyebrow.

It hasn’t always been easy for me to type with italics. Back in my earliest typing days, word processors were my main vehicle for typing essays, though hand-written essays were still very much the norm even as I entered college. That would change rapidly as personal computers began to saturate American homes during the 90s.

In order to italicize something here in the Substack interface, I just need to mouse over the word and highlight it, then click the slanty I button in the text editor that follows me everywhere I go. During word processor days, though, it was quite the ordeal.

Research tells me that I had to swap out the actual printwheel with a specialized one, which the Smith-Corona word processor I learned to type on made as easy as possible… but you can imagine how badly anyone typing on these beasts would try to avoid having to do that.

There were other options for italicizing or emphasizing. The “easiest” way was to use quotation marks.

I threw quotation marks around the word easiest there because it was easy to type, but not necessarily to convey information. That left room for interpretation in the mind of the reader.

Quotes were very common when I was writing and publishing zines or DIY publications in the 90s, and they remained somewhat prominent through the early 2000s as everyone finally shifted from word processors to computers with printers.

Gradually, italics and its cousin bold replaced quotation marks where appropriate, so those quotes weren’t doing triple duty any more. However, you’re certainly well aware that quotes are still used in this way all the time.

That’s why they are increasingly called out as scare quotes.

Now, this term wasn’t invented during the 2010s, but the phrase “scare quotes” did come into prominence during this time. If you used quotation marks to emphasize something in a headline, you would leave a lot of room for interpretation.

There’s more, though. Unlike italics, which indicate intrigue or interest in a word, scare quotes invite skepticism.

You want to create some distance between you and what’s being said. You’re saying, I did not say this. Someone else did. I do not actually endorse this claim, and I want to make that clear.

How did you “like” today’s article? What did I miss?