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That exhaustingly (if not exhaustively) describes a number of important distinctions that never come up when some hapless commenter gets told off they're using quotes wrong. It's a Talmudic absurdity to apply to a message board. We don't have 70 comment threads about the proper use of "it's" vs "its", with MLA citations (which, it's worth recalling, "specifies guidelines for formatting manuscripts and using the English language in writing")

It's just a dumb, arbitrary rule. It serves no purpose beyond facilitating righteous rebuke. You can make a better rule dealing with the underlying behaviour while oxygen deprived from screaming at dang about HN's political bias.




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