Next to misplaced apostrophes (traditionally used by greengrocer’s to advertise banana’s), quotation marks are next on the list of punctuation that is thrown in generous handfuls at writing without any real idea why.

The ‘blog’ of unnecessary ‘quotation’ marks beautifully highlights this with howlingly funny pictures taken by contributors of punctuation pain.

Most of the examples on Bethany Keeley’s blog seem to show that writers of posters and signs believe that quotes make their writing stand out - and so it does, but in completely the wrong way. But outside using it to show direct quotes, quotation marks are more correctly used to show ‘nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense’, according to the Chicago Manual of Style.

Which makes it all the funner when they are abused by people offering ‘food’ (what, you mean it isn’t really?). Or, like the picture here, a way out in case of ‘fire’ (no, go on you’re having a laugh).