I’ve always been in favor of using ‘ and ’ more. It doesn’t seem fair to relegate them to the not-very-common quotes-within-quotes. (Apostrophes are a different beast—they even have a different name.)

So, I made up my own usage. I use traditional “ and ” double quotes for direct quotes, as per normal, and single quotes to quote quotes containing quotations. But, that’s all I do with them.

With the thinner, and much less obtrusive, single quotes, I also use them when I’m referring to words. For instance, I would say the word ‘weird’ is spelled weird(ly). Playing Scrabble, I might remark that I wish I had more ‘H’s. (To avoid the lazy typist’s abbreviation for High School.) I wish I was an ‘A’ student.

So, how wrong am I?