a singular advertisement

It nice of the writer of this sign to set a puzzle to entertain us as we shop.

If it's about one umbrella, we're left wondering what the umbrella possesses.

Perhaps the umbrella's handle was $19.99. Or maybe its spokes.

On the other hand, if there's a 'typo' and the sign is advertising umbrellas, we're left wondering what other single item used to be $19.99 and is now $9.99.

What a mystery.

Using punctuation to mislead

When a new pharmacy opened in my local shopping centre, I was interested to see the sign saying it was Australia's Cheapest Chemist.

But wait a minute...

There's some tiny print on the sign - Is this?

So, the sign might say, 'Is this Australia's cheapest chemist?'

Horrible punctuation, though - 'Is this? Australia's cheapest chemist.'

Who knows? I'm not going to find out, because I think a shop that indulges in such deplorable punctuation is best avoided.

organic or pretend organic?

Have a look at these bags of planting mix. Organic or just pretending to be organic?

My understanding of quotation marks around a noun means to be wary of the genuineness of the thing named. It implies irony in the use of the marked word.

Cambridge Dictionaries Online says:

 We also use single quotation marks to draw attention to a word. We can use quotation marks in this way when we want to question the exact meaning of the word:
I am very disappointed by his 'apology'. I don't think he means it.  

NEW 'WAR' OVER NORTH SEA FISHING PLANS

This Washington State University site on American usage discusses the same sort of thing I've noticed on the bag of planting mix:

There are many ways to go wrong with quotation marks. They are often used ironically: 

She ran around with a bunch of "intellectuals." 

The quotation marks around "intellectuals" indicate that the writer believes that these are in fact so-called intellectuals, not really intellectuals at all. The ironic use of quotation marks is very much overdone, and is usually a sign of laziness indicating that the writer has not bothered to find the precise word or expression necessary.  

Advertisers unfortunately tend to use quotation marks merely for emphasis: 

"FRESH" TOMATOES

59 CENTS A POUND 

The influence of the more common ironic usage tends to make the reader question whether these tomatoes are really fresh. Underlining, bold lettering, all caps - there are several less ambiguous ways to emphasise words than placing them between quotation marks. 

I managed to overcome my initial reaction to this strange punctuation, and bought the product to plant my nice new Jonathan apple in enriched soil.

Israelis can recognise sarcasm

A Great Catchy Name: Semi-Supervised Recognition of Sarcastic Sentences in Online Product Reviews. What an amusing title for a research report on teaching computers to detect sarcasm in written text.

Computer scientists at a university in Israel 'taught' an algorithm to recognise sarcasm by showing it about 5,500 sentences from Amazon product reviews that human volunteers said were or were not sarcastic.

This page has a few of the sarcastic reviews.

Here are some definitions of sarcasm.

I wonder if they'll buy the algorithm a graduation gift now that it's finished learning how to communicate more fully with the human race. They could buy it a downloadable punctution mark for sarcasm, the SarcMark.

funny quotation marks

I've just been laughing out loud at the photos on the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks.

It's hilarious.

What a money saver it would be if someone told the sign-writers not to waste paint on those unnecessary punctuation marks.

I found this great site by following a link from Language Log.

sometimes a comma can make your hankies stay dirty

A full-stop instead of a comma would have made it clear. The care instructions on the reverse of the packet of beautiful Liberty fabric handkerchiefs said, 'DO NOT BLEACH, WARM MACHINE OR HAND WASH, SHORT SPIN, WARM IRON'.
Hmm. If you can't bleach them, fine. But how will I keep them clean if I can't machine or hand wash?