Please, "Stop" With the "Quotations"

Generally speaking, things have names for a reason.  Take "things," for example - objects, persons, places, ideas - discrete chunks of...of whatever.  We have words which refer to them, and the collective term for these words is "nouns."  See? If you know a word is a noun, you know what you can and can't do with it in a sentence, where you might expect to see it used, whether or not you need to conjugate it, and so on.

"Noun," unfortunately, will not tell the uninitiated its definition just by sitting there being itself.  If an intelligent English-speaking person entirely unfamiliar with grammatical terms saw "noun" free of context, one could readily forgive them for thinking it some kind of weird flat-faced asthmatic dog.  This, fortunately, does not hold true of all terms - or even all grammatical ones!  I mean, even punctuation, supposedly one of this language's bastions of mystification, comes in varieties best termed "two by four-to-the-cranium obvious."

Or at least - cue ominous thunderclap - it damn well should.*  Yet people persist, curse their grandmother's eyes, in using quotation marks for emphasis.  That's quotation marks, folks!  What's their purpose?  Oh geeze, I wonder!  Could it POSSIBLY be RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME?  Noooo! Neverrrr!  That might actually make SENSE!  Let's use them to "emphasize" things, because that "really" doesn't make it sound like we're being "sarcastic" or using "scare quotes" now, does it!  I mean, it's not like "quote marks" exist to "denote" "quotations," i.e. things that other people said, or that you said at some other point in time and that the only reasons one would to this are to: a) give credit to the quote's originator and b) differentiate the quote from one's own current dialogue, namely what you are saying, right now, that you actually mean, right now.

I deliver the newspaper to a bowling alley.  The bowling alley has all these hand-printed, mercifully legible signs hung up on and around the front door.  Well, they're mercifully legible until you get to the horrific quotation mark abuse and give yourself a headache wondering why "alcoholic," or, for that matter, "outside," need scare quotes in "no "alcoholic" beverages "outside," please."  Also mystifying is why they allow "no "smoking" within "fifteen feet" of the "building.""  What does it mean?  At what dark shenanigans do these misplaced marks so ominously hint?  What untoward meanings of "fifteen feet" have yet to enter my apparently blessedly naive awareness?

For heaven's sake, people, please at the very least pay attention to the obvious.  It may not hit you over the brainbox with a board, but grammar cops the world over will be glad to do so, just let us put on the gardening gloves so we don't get splinters owe you a drink or two or ten just for sparing our brain cells the vain hours poring over your hidden meanings.

*Yes.  I mean "should."  Wilful stupidity counts as a crime in my books.