Sorry, I used the quote marks just as… brackets, kind of?
(Is that a too non-standard usage? What is the proper way to put a clearly separated group of words into a sentence, without making it seem like a quotation? Sometimes connecting-by-hyphens does the job, but it seems weird when the text gets longer.)
EDIT: Okay, replaced by actual brackets. Sorry for all the confusion I caused.
I expect most readers of your original comment indeed misinterpreted those quotes to be literal when they’re anything but. Maybe edit the original comment and add a bunch of “(to paraphrase)”s or “as I understand you”s?
I think in this case brackets is pretty good. I agree with Martin that it’s good to avoid using quote marks when it might be mistaken for a literal quote.
FWIW, I have a tendency to do quote-grouping for ideas sometimes too, but it’s pretty tough to read unless your reader has a lot of understanding in what you’re doing. Although it’s both ugly and unclear, I prefer to use square brackets because people at least know that I’m doing something weird, though it still kinda looks like I’m [doing some weird paraphrasing thing].
Sorry, I used the quote marks just as… brackets, kind of?
(Is that a too non-standard usage? What is the proper way to put a clearly separated group of words into a sentence, without making it seem like a quotation? Sometimes connecting-by-hyphens does the job, but it seems weird when the text gets longer.)
EDIT: Okay, replaced by actual brackets. Sorry for all the confusion I caused.
I expect most readers of your original comment indeed misinterpreted those quotes to be literal when they’re anything but. Maybe edit the original comment and add a bunch of “(to paraphrase)”s or “as I understand you”s?
I think in this case brackets is pretty good. I agree with Martin that it’s good to avoid using quote marks when it might be mistaken for a literal quote.
FWIW, I have a tendency to do quote-grouping for ideas sometimes too, but it’s pretty tough to read unless your reader has a lot of understanding in what you’re doing. Although it’s both ugly and unclear, I prefer to use square brackets because people at least know that I’m doing something weird, though it still kinda looks like I’m [doing some weird paraphrasing thing].