December 21st

[ewx]

[Poll #627388]

I've been idly looking out for the different approaches to quoting among newspapers. The BBC, the Independent, the Times, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express all use scare quotes (though some aren't completely consistent about it); I couldn't find any instances of scare quotes in the Economist and Guardian articles I found on the subject. (I confess to not doing an exhaustive search on any of these papers.)

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

But that's the question: are they marriage, and why? In legal terminology, sure, they're technically different at the moment, but most people don't speak in legal terminology most of the time (fortunately), so that argument doesn't carry much weight with me, or hopefuly anyone else who pays attention to the way people use language.

The vernacular will doubtless work itself out given time, but I foresee a generation of new twist on the argument over whether gay means happy or homosexual.

[(Anonymous)]

They are specifically intended by the government to be identical to marriage, as revealed by http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3996819.stm

S