Many decades ago, I attended a talk given by the brilliant and hilarious MacArthur Fellowship-awarded poet Heather McHugh.
(For all those who believe being nit-picky with language isn't worth the time and concentration it takes, all I can say is that her 60 full minutes of discussion focused on variations of meaning and effect due to a writer's choice to use "the" or "a" might have changed your mind. A man or the man? A funeral or the funeral? A chocolate frosted donut or the chocolate frosted donut?)
One aside into unnecessary quotation marks has stayed with me: a handwritten sign McHugh had seen in the window of a rural North Carolina filling station, reading:
"Handyman" "Available"
With each word encased in its own set of punctuation, can we be sure what type of handyman we're talking about? Or what kind of available the handyman might be?
Given that, what do you make of this sign?
Image: sign with every word separately in quotes
Sadly, I was en route to another location and was unable to see for myself what appeared on the rooftop.