[bayindirh]

Equally, I don’t understand the horrid assumption about everyone being born in an English speaking country and has English as the native language.

So, why in the hell are you just berating me via a comment box?

I made a mistake, alright, and used quotation marks as a tone modifier, because I know no other way to do that.

However in this case you could just pointed me the right direction without berating, since pointing out the mistake already acts as a kind direction arrow.

[avgcorrection]

> Equally, I don’t understand the horrid assumption about everyone being born in an English speaking country and has English as the native language.

Did I even hint that I was assuming anything about native vs. non-native English speaker? Or blaming non-native speakers? No. Play that wounded ESL violin somewhere else.

> I made a mistake, alright, ...

I said that I think that it is bad style. Alright. I didn’t say that it is wrong. (People are doing it a lot these days so apparently it isn’t wrong.)

[bayindirh]

There's no blame, I agree, but expecting everyone to know proper use of quotation marks (incl. uncommon ways) pulls in some assumption about proper grammar, hence some long experience with the language. Quotation marks are simple tools, but they are hard to master, because they have nuanced uses too. Getting these things wrong is easy.

> Play that wounded ESL violin somewhere else.

I'm not playing a wounded violin, or any violin for that matter. I'm a double bassist. Jokes aside, I'm not being apologetic, just explaining my position. On the other hand, if reading a comment squarely in your own tone bothers you, you might want to think on that, at least a little.

Your wording of your comment implies that I'm doing something wrong by using quotation marks, and I take a note for that. Why are you so upset because somebody admits that there's a room for improvement?

The only thing I'm not agreeing on is your way of sending the message to this shore, that's it.

The thing is, neither English punctuation, nor Hacker News has many facilities to convey tone while discussing. I like to do that in my writing style to convey feelings and tone of my comment. Quotation marks seemed like a usable way to do that, and I possibly got used to that from literary works I've read, so I copied the method.

However, if a native (or more knowledgeable) person tells me that I'm wrong, I tend to believe them and try to learn the proper way, that's it.