What's so "funny" about "quotation" marks?

See for yourself.

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

This fabulously funny blog was supplied by one of my co-workers, who somehow can always find the funniest stuff on the interwebs.

Semicolons on the subway

A story from this winter about my least favorite punctuation mark making an appearance . . . and it's actually used correctly.

The perfect punctuation storm

Missing commas, random apostrophes, misspellings and more. All in one place. Wow. Thanks to my super cool Grandma-in-law for snagging this beauty.

Freckles on her butt?

I've heard this little song about a thousand times since I was a kid, and never once did I realize it was a grammar exercise:

She has freckles on her butt.
She is nice.

The idea is that it teaches kids how silly things sound when the punctuation is wrong. It SHOULD read like this:

She has freckles on her,
but she is nice.

At first, I felt stupid and kind of left out that I hadn't understood it sooner. But then it occurred to me: this only works if you accept "She has freckles on her" as a complete thought. Why would anyone think it's OK to say it like that? She has freckles on her skin, arms, body, etc. But she has freckles on HER? Isn't that just redneck talk?

You got yer culottes on ya, Brandine?

Sure do, pa. Uh oh, the baby's got some Skol spit on her.
C'mere Cyndrell, lemme wipe that off.

Damn, woman. You ready to go? I'm anxious to get down to the Waffle House, cuz I hear the new waitress has a mole on her.

Yessum, I'm ready. But are you sure you wanna wear that t-shirt? It shows the world that third nipple on you.

And so on and so forth. She has freckles on her? That just doesn't sound right.

Happy President's/Presidents/Presidents' Day!

If we worked in financial services or education, we'd have today off. But we don't. So the best we can do is snottily remind our readers that this is the day of *many* presidents. Henceforth, it is PRESIDENTS' DAY. Gotta love the plural possessive.

Apostrophe isn"t sufficient?

Here's a gem that's right down the street from the VERBOSITEE offices. I pass it every morning, and each day it makes my face go crinkly and my pre-work optimism fall to ruins.

Maybe the proprietor just didn't think an apostrophe was good enough. Maybe he wanted double the punctuation power. The sign has been there for a LOOOONG time, reminding us that the education crisis is in no way a new battle.

Crazy for quotation marks

I've been noticing a lot of unwarranted uses of quotation marks lately. For no reason at all, people just think they can throw quotes on something to emphasize it. That's really not the purpose of the punctuation. I'm not sure where this trend "came from," but I'm not really a "huge fan" of it. Those were my joke quotes. Here are some real-world examples.

This one shows a slogan in quotes. Why? Did someone actually say these words at some point and erect this signage to document that? In that case, where's the quote's attribution? Or perhaps we're supposed to feel as if the sign is actually SAYING this to us to build a more human connection. That's probably it.

This example gives us some crappy grammar AND randomly used quotes. What, is it not REALLY a wait list? Is it really the list you put people on who are never going to be seated and you just wanted to give it an ironic name? Seriously.