Mention vs use of a word - English Language Usage Stack Exchange The inverted commas are there to aid comprehension, not to satisfy some punctuation tzar In the first pair of examples, "The side of the street is called the 'sidewalk' " emphasises the term and is a perfectly acceptable way to do so
phrase requests - English Language Usage Stack Exchange I want to describe, in a phrase, a number of traits in a person I'm looking to describe a self-righteous, pious person who cannot stop bragging about her his moral values while trying to impose