sez you!

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jan 31, 2004

"Scare quotes" are a typographical "trick" used to express some authorial "distance" between a writer and a word he finds himself "obliged" to use. Often the "essayist" employs scare quotes sarcastically to "sneer" at the "suspect" term, and in so doing he reveals more about his own "inner life" than about his "target". Take a glance at "Catholic" polemicist Fr. Richard McBrien's "offering" in the LA Tidings and simply note which terms get the "treatment."