Quick, someone tell Grammar Girl!

Our local TV station ran a quick story about a shooting in College Station. Unfortunately, their mis-use of quotation marks around the word accidental implies that there is more to the story—that perhaps the shooting was intentional or made to look like an accident.

Shame on you, KBTX! Unless you have factual reason to believe that this shooting was intentional, you have no right to tarnish this man’s reputation with your implications. He is most certainly in a living hell right now. Why would you allow a punctuation error to make it worse?

Punctuation matters!