The Bendigo Advertiser has recently had to clarify that local skateboarders have not been ejecting undigested food stuffs and body acids via their mouths.
“I understand the confusion,” said editor-in-chief Nobby Johnson. “Because when kids today say they are spewing, they are not necessarily vomiting all over the place.”
To do this the Advertiser used single quotation marks around the word spewing, written as ‘spewing’.
“We had to literally think up some way of pointing out that these cool dudes were not literally doing what they were literally saying,” explained EC Johnson.
Usually double quotation marks are used to highlight a direct quote in the media.
“It’s an American influence, actually,” said Johnson. “Then plebs got used to seeing double quotation marks everywhere, and they grew up to be teachers, and so people got taught double quotation are for use in works of fiction too.”
Therefore single quotes were used by the Addy to indicate an alternative use of the word spew, ironically not using double talkies to underscore spoken meaning.
“It’s the youth of today,” stated EC Johnson. “They use words like “mint” and “stoked” and “tuna”, when referring to things that are not exactly food, fireplace, or fish related.”
Fun times ahead for language development.
