Scare quotes are quotation marks that are used to denote some sort of derision; they often are not direct quotes of anything anyone said. For instance, George Bush really provided a lot of “help” to Katrina victims. This is not quoting any source, but clearly everything about Katrina was a massive failure where Bush was involved, and it’s that failure that is being indicated. However, this version of scare quoting sucks. A superior version is to use single quotations, i.e., George Bush really provided a lot of ‘help’ to Katrina victims. This works better because direct quotations usually have double quotation marks (except, for instance, when there is a quote within a quote).
Sometimes scare quotes do reference something that was actually said. For instance, “Change” we can believe in quotes part of a phrase, but it is intentionally being used out of the originally intended context (and this different use is being indicated, unlike with quote-mining). In this instance it may be more sensible to use a double quotation mark since the phrase is so commonly actually said.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Scare quotes, Thought of the day |
For the Sake of Science 
“‘OK'”
Point the first: The entire point of scare quotes and the reason they are derisive is because they are indicating a hypothetical quotation. The idea is, you the speaker do not think “help” applies, but you are quoting a (fictional, implicitly misguided) person who does. This sets them apart from abominable practices such as emphasis quoting, where quote marks are genuinely inappropriate.
Point the second: You may be interested in reading this post.