What are scare quotes and how can you use them in your creative writing?
What are scare quotes?
Scare quotes are quotation marks used to show your reader that the meaning of the word or phrase placed in quotation marks should not be taken literally.
For example:
Fred's “book” has barely sold a copy.
This scare quote shows us this book isn’t really much of a book at all. It could be a few pages of nonsense or a thousand pages of poorly edited words. Either way, the writer of this sentence here deems what Fred has written is not worthy of the title of "book" but "book" is how Fred has described it.
What do scare quotes do?
They distance the writer
Scare quotes distance the writer from the quoted words, suggesting the writer thinks they are inappropriate, strange or not fit for purpose. This might be because the writer considers them misleading, inaccurate or the meaning can't be known for sure.
For example:
This tea is known for having "healing properties".
They warn of an unknown word or phrase
On other occasions scare quotes can have the opposite of distancing the writer. Instead, they can indicate that the writer is familiar with the term while signalling to the reader that the term they're about to encounter will seem unusual to them. This could be because the word has been coined by the writer or because it's not widely known.
For example:
We are investigating another case of "speedy baking".
Here, the writer has invented the term "speedy baking". As the writer knows "speedy baking" is unlikely to be a term familiar to the reader, the scare quotes reassure the reader that they weren't meant to know this term.
They slow the flow of a sentence
Scare quotes also disrupt the flow of a sentence – in a good way! A reader will naturally slow down as they read a word or phrase in scare quotes. This helps place additional emphasis on a specific word.
For example:
She's seeking "professional" help.
Conclusion
Scare quotes are quotation marks used for the following purposes:
To show the meaning of the word or phrase should not be taken literally
To distance the writer from the quoted words or phrase
To introduce new terminology
In other words, scare quotes beckon your reader to proceed with caution as the word they are about to encounter should not be taken literally or may be unfamiliar.