Gary recently saw this post on Facebook. The headline is:
Three 'beloved' snow leopards died of Covid complications at Nebraska zoo.
"So they weren't really beloved?" I asked Gary. "Are those, like, air quotes?'
"People use quotation marks to set things off now."
"I've seen that, but it's wrong."
"They do it online, because you can't use an underline on the web, because people will try to click it."
People, what do you think? I think those people need to learn about italics. Is this acceptable now?
If they were each named after a character in a Toni Morrison book, fine, but then capitalize the B.
(I would not do anything to the word; it is weird to emphasis; but they need to learn about italics...)
Posted by: KC | November 19, 2021 at 10:34 AM
Hmm. I don't think either single quotation marks OR italics would fit here; the animals were beloved. It's not open to conjecture or in need of emphasis; It's just a fact.
Posted by: Rockycat | November 19, 2021 at 10:39 AM
KC - your comment about the names made me want to delve deeper - maybe they were Joe and Amanda Beloved, famed snow leopards.
Rockycat - (it's been years!) Mystery solved, and I think the missing clue wasn't in the version of the article I saw, or I skipped it. Beloved It is in quotes because it's a quote. The NYT is quoting the Nebraska zoo:
The Lincoln Children’s Zoo lamented the deaths of Ranney, Everest and Makalu in a Facebook post on its official page Friday evening, saying the mountain cats “were beloved by our entire community inside and outside of the zoo.”
Posted by: TheQueen | November 19, 2021 at 11:19 AM
I feel like quotes need to be longer than one word to really work well as quotes, but that's at least a coherent reason. (unlike me, using emphasis instead of emphasize, sigh)
Posted by: KC | November 19, 2021 at 11:25 PM
KC - I didn't even notice!
Posted by: TheQueen | November 21, 2021 at 04:23 AM