Truly, political correctness is anathema to me.... As a writer, I understand the power of quotation marks. In fiction writing, it’s when my characters come to life and speak. In my nonfiction work, this form of punctuation indicates the words contained within are quoted verbatim, exactly as uttered from the mouth of the speaker cited. Sometimes in my writing, I’ll put quotation marks around a single word to convey what I consider to be questionable usage. Those applications are the only ones using quotes with which I am comfortable using. For example, today I'd like to talk about the ongoing effort to stigmatize users of an currently “unpopular” word. You see, in this instance, “unpopular” suggests that nobody likes the word. But in truth, only a certain set of people dislike use of the word and seek to marginalize its use by the general public. However, there is yet another convention. In the modern vernacular, quotes placed around only a single letter signify that the word associated in question that comes to mind in the given context is politically incorrect, or verboten. For example, the “N” word associated with a racial slur is considered one of the most horrible, offensive words in the English language. It is thought to be so bad that a teacher got fired for using the word "niggardly" correctly in a sentence, because it only sounded like the forbidden one. Before you think it was simply an aberration, the same thing happened to the aide to the mayor of Washington, D.C. In other words, ignorance and hypersensitivity to political … [Read more...]