“We mean exactly what we say the words say, not something else like ‘microwave,'” said spokesperson Miriam Webster regarding quote marks, while giving Trump the “air finger.”
NYC â Exact Quotations spokesperson Miriam Webster quoth today that her members were in an âexistential uproarâ following Donald Trumpâs âabusiveâ suggestion that his misuse of quotes around âwire tappingâ meant something else than âwire tapping,â such as âmicrowave ovens.â

âIn English writing,â Ms Webster said definitively, âquotation marks or inverted commas, also known informally as quotes, speech marks, quote marks, quotemarks or speechmarks, are punctuation marks placed on either side of a word or phrase in order to identify it as a quotation, direct speech or a literal title or name.
âIn other words,â she fumed, âquotation marks mean exactly what we bloody say they say, and nothing more. We quotes are the guardians of verisimilitude. What we surround are the exact words used, not their opposite or something else. We are the public bodyguards of precise meanings, the Secret Service of Semantics.â
Ms Webster cited the well-known example of Edgar Allen Poeâs raven, who repeatedly quothed, âNever more.â
âIn the Ravenâs case âNever moreâ meant ânever more,ââ said Ms Webster. âIt did not mean âsheâll be back tomorrow or maybe by the weekend.â Thatâs why Poe said âQuoth the Raven,â and put its words inside quotation marks. He meant, âEleanor ainât coming back,â and in fact she never did.â
Ms Webster added that âso-called air quotes, indicated by gesturing double fingers, literally do not exist.
âThey are air today and gone tomorrow. Like Macbethâs witches, if I may quote, they âdissolve and vanish into thin air.â They literally cannot be written down. Thatâs the whole point.
âAn air quote is not a there quote. To quote Gertrude Stein, âThere is no there there.â Thereâs only air there.â
Ms Webster emphatically denounced the âfalse assertionâ by the White Houseâs Chief Prevaricator, Sean Sphincter, that placing quote marks around âwire tappingâ implied that President Trump intended some other meaning, such as âmicrowave ovenâ or âSamsung television set.â
âA quote is a quote is a quote,â she said. âAnd please note that that is not a quote. It just plays off another Gertrude Steinism.”
âListen, Trumpâ she apostrophised, Â âwhen you put a word or phrase inside a set of quotation marks, double or single, youâre saying that you mean exactly that, âand neither more nor less,â to quote Aliceâs Humpty Dumpty.
âYou can claim that air quotes unsay what they appear to say, but you canât transfer their meaning post hoc to whatâs set down inside a published tweet, you lying POS.
âAnd you can quote me on that.”