Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Project Urban Babies and and what's with the quotes, folks?

Miss Avery and Megan were kind enough to meet Henry and I in the Pearl to begin what promises to be a very cute baby project. Miss Avery is a few months behind Henry but growing like a weed and is so frickin' adorable you can't hardly stand it. Per usual, the babies got along splendidly, even during simultaneous diaper changes in the sun and a rather vigorous photo shoot around the area. Here's a pic of the two yutes together. Yes, Henry's shirt does say "Mmmm...boobies..."
Typing about words with quotes around them, this book I'm reading to prep for school is crazy with the quotation marks. Observe...
Judicial decisions sometimes will refer to a single statute, for example, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, as "the Act." A comprehensive statute on a single broad subject may be called a "code."
...
Appellate courts also exercise some review over the judgments that trial courts make about "facts," that is, determinations about what "happened" or "occurred" that serve as the basis for the application of the legal rules we call the "law."
...
These decisions are called "mandatory" or "binding" precedents. "Precedents" means the prior case law and "mandatory" and "binding" mean that the court must follow these decisions.
Seriously? I believe these quotation marks to be "superfluous" and "unnecessary" to the study and practice of "the law."

3 comments:

B. E. Busby said...

Two things:

1) What's yer sprog doing with his right hand? Looks like one of those old TV ads, "... don't touch that dial!" as if Ms. Avery might be blurry or receiving static.

2) As you will soon see, unlike Strunk & White, the use of the quotes in the "lieu" (to quote Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau) is to highlight the definition or "term" which substitutes for a prior phrase. In contracts the "Term" will often be written later, without quotes, with the cap being the defined term flag for the reader's eyes.

Dr. A said...

Now I understand everything the attorney Lionel Hutz ever said.

Amber said...

Those are some cute babes. My Avery got a kick out of seeing "Henry's Avery."