Fowler, H. W. 1908. The degree of necessity will vary slightly with the mental state of the audience for whom a book is intended. To an educated man it is an annoyance to find his author warning him that something written long ago, and quoted every day almost ever since, is not an original remark now first struck out. The following examples start with the least justifiable uses, and stop at the point where quotation marks become more or less necessary. John Smith, Esq., 'Chatsworth', Melton Road, Leamington.
Every metaphor ought to be treated as a quotation, if in the pillory is to be.
Here, moreover, quotation marks are a practical tautology, after so to speak. There is by this time no danger whatever of confusion with the cat of one tail. This may be called the propitiatory use, analogous in print to the tentative air with which, in conversation, the Englishman not sure of his pronunciation offers a French word. So trifling a phrase is not worth using at the cost of quotation marks. If it could pass without, well and good.