Isn't it "funny" how something can "really annoy" you for ages and then you discover via "the Internet" that the same thing "really annoys" thousands of "other people," too?

That was the statement of Bethany keeley on her "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. Indeed, as global warming issues intensify and gas prices rise, the abuse of quotes among bloggers and wordsmiths accelerates as well.

having started as a longtime family joke. A communications student who specializes in rhetoric at the University of Georgia in Athens, she started her blog in 2005 after her senior year in college in Michigan, reported Associated Press.

"I have a thing against overuse of quotations, period," says Hoy, director of the expository writing program at New York University. "Whether in academic or bureaucratic writing, it's giving up responsibility for what you're writing. It's a pushing aside of the responsibility to be the major thinker in the piece."

Oh yeah, there's nothing wrong with using quotations and citing references. But wordsmiths have the responsibility of making himself the 'major thinker' of his own masterpiece.