I need some quick editing advice. In my small town, they have a page in the newspaper with pictures of all of the graduates and small ads placed by family and friends. In my ad for my daughter, I'm quoting an excerpt from a poem but the words are taken from the middle of a phrase so I had to use ellipses at the beginning and the end. I've italicized it to indicate it is a quote. It looks like this:

...quick brown fox...

I just got a proof that shows the layout people added quotation marks - but only to the end. Is that right? Given the informal context, do I need quotation marks and if I do, shouldn't they be at the beginning and end?

I know this is a strange thing to obsess about but focusing on details in times of stress is kinda my thing.

le nubian, I'll have to take a look at it. Sounds like it might do well where iTunes does not.

The great thing about Stitcher is that it's streaming rather than downloading. Useful when your phone memory fills up too fast.

Escrow is officially opened. Deposit check is in their hands. Tons of papers signed and initialed. Eep!

lcat, I'd say quote marks at both ends or neither, and if it's a well-known and recognizable poem then no quotes at all is fine (not usually, but a loving parental message to the new graduate is pretty informal and you are unlikely to be dinged for improper citation format).

I loved Greg Proops when he was on Whose Line Is It Anyway in the 90s.

Trivia: He was on that because he and Mike McShane had been in the same improv troupe since their undergrad years at SF State University, and once McShane started getting lots of love from Whose Line... he made it his mission to drag as many friends over to England as possible to show off their awesome funniness to as many people as possible, since they weren't getting all the props they deserved out here.

And eek and yay, omnis!

And, seriously, bribe juliana to do up your new place for you.

Damn, sj, I'm very sorry, and especially sorry that your bank is being so assy and useless, but very glad the actual household funds are safe.

WHEE OMNIS!!!! I’m no Juliana, but I will help you decorate. I can’t paint too much (tendonitis ahoy), but I’m full of advice!

{{{sj}}} That really sucks.

Burrell, you might find this to be useful: [link] It's a page of suggestions about steps to take to help solve inappropriate elimination problems, from a company that makes special cat litter with scent additives that are designed to attract the cat to the litter. Here is a much more detailed article covering the same areas. Because there there is both stress and UTI feeding the problem, you might want to start with by assuming it is mostly the stress that is causing it. Then if it continues, bring out the big-guns. When a cat stops using the litter box because of a UTI then continues to avoid it after the infection is cleared up, it is because the cat associates the pain of the UTI with the litter box. There are steps for retraining the cat to the litter box are discussed on pages 3 and 4 of the longer article.

ETA: the link to the longer article [link] because otherwise I'm just a link tease.

How exciting, Omnis!

JZ, are you in Nevada?

Thanks Wind Sparrow, I'll take a closer look when I get home. It looks like we are doing a lot of those things already. My suspicion is it's related to stress and marking territory, not the long ago UTI.

o-a, YAY!!!!

lolc, quick brown fox is part of a typing panagram, phrase that has all the letters in the English language, which you knew. I'm sure.

But I don't think it needs quotation marks or to be italicized, any more than if someone were to make a reference to sour grapes, or dog in the manger. They are just allusions that are so common that they are part of most English-speaking persons' word-set.