Scare quotes

The New Republic has a pretty funny article posted right now about the WSJ editorial board's use of scare quotes. According to the article, "Like most of us, the Journal [editorial board] uses scare quotes to signify that a term is misleading." The problem, argues The New Republic, is that The WSJ uses quotation marks in ways that seem to either indicate a certain level of incompetency in the use of the English language or a disdain for certain policies. Assuming that one of the respected papers in our country can speak our language, that leads us to the conclusion that The WSJ is simply implying a lot more than it is saying, an interesting practice for a news source.

I am posting this more because of my own frustration with the overuse of quotation marks than because of my opinions about the WSJ editorial staff (opinions that are more or less nonexistent).