In short, I have the following cases where I claim you should not use quotes:
(0) of course no quotes for emphasis, (1) don’t use quotes to indicate that you’re not going to explain a word, (2) don’t try to distance yourself from a phrase by putting it in quotes, (3) use italics instead of quotes for introducing a term, unless it’s also a mention as opposed to a use of the term, in which case either is ok.
And that leaves the following as the remaining acceptable uses:
Quoting someone or otherwise referring to the literal string of characters
To indicate you don’t mean something literally — like adding a parenthetical “not really”
I have an old post on the scare quotes question: https://messymatters.com/scarequotes/
In short, I have the following cases where I claim you should not use quotes:
(0) of course no quotes for emphasis, (1) don’t use quotes to indicate that you’re not going to explain a word, (2) don’t try to distance yourself from a phrase by putting it in quotes, (3) use italics instead of quotes for introducing a term, unless it’s also a mention as opposed to a use of the term, in which case either is ok.
And that leaves the following as the remaining acceptable uses:
Quoting someone or otherwise referring to the literal string of characters
To indicate you don’t mean something literally — like adding a parenthetical “not really”