UN-words

[George Thompson]

I have always supposed that "unquote" represents "end quote": "our president is a quote great war leader end quote" and that those who suppose otherwise are the ones who say "unquote" and put it immediately after the word "quote" rather than after the words being quoted.  {Notice the careful avoidance of prescriptivism here.)  Nor would I ever type "quote . . . endquote" or expect to read "quote unquote".  I would expect to use and to see actual quotations marks.  (A bit of prescriptivism creeps in here, I admit.  But nobody's perfect.)

There are also people who indicate a quotation when speaking by wiggling two fingers at the beginning and the end of the quotation.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.

----- Original Message -----
From: sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 11:30 am
Subject: Re: UN-words

> Larry Horn writes:
> >  Your
> >"unquote" is a bit different, because I'm not quite sure how to
> >describe it's category when used in metalinguistic contexts like
> >"He's a quote linguist unquote" or "He's a quote unquote linguist".
> >(The AHD lists it as a noun, but I'm not sure I agree.)
> ~~~~~~~~~
> On the face of it, quote/unquote looks to be functionally
> equivalent to
> do/undo:  doesn't sound like a noun to me.  (I was NOT going to call
> attention to your "it's" but I see you've already blushed.)
> A. Murie
>