Do you know what I hate? When B-grade companies, in a desperate attempt to make their pathetic attempts at marketing appear more persuasive, put every inane untruth in a pair of inverted commas. The shoddy-looking chiropodist down the road from my office who claims to be "A haven of health" has clearly realised that no-one would believe such an absurdity if it wasn't surrounded by those all-validating quotation marks. "London's best bagels!" proclaims a local eaterie, entirely failing to mention which culinary mastermind or boiled bread lover has tested every single bagel in the capital before settling on a winner using a perspex clipboard and a complex system of multiple choice and pi. "A holiday you'll never forget" - what about after a head injury? And who's making this claim? What is their version of unforgettable? A fortnight at Guantanamo would certainly stick around in the memory but it's not necessarily something I'd rush to use my Air Miles on...
It must be true, suggests the punctuation, because someone has said it out loud. Sneaking into our subconscious like crack, the speech marks suggest that a third person - perhaps, egad! a celebrity or someone intelligent enough to form an actual opinion - has opened their lipglossed mouth and voiced their thoughts; surrounded by speech marks, suddenly what was previously just an annoying boast has magically been transformed into an objective and plausible fact. Readers, it sends me into sweats of rage. Honestly, it's a miracle I can write about it without requiring sedation, but I risk my health so that you, too, will start noticing this modern punctuatory irritant and choose to remain doggedly unpersuaded by it. Smokes and mirrors, ladies and gentlemen - that's all it is. And it's up to us to resist temptation. Consumers of the world, unite against this trickery! Do not fall for this falsity! Unaccredited quotations do not equal truth! "Jumping off a cliff is brilliant!" Hello? Anyone?
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