It is frustrating that quotation marks have come to have two, almost perfectly opposite meanings (the traditional "words someone actually said" and the new "words no one actually said"). I guess the battle against the new usage is lost though.
I think it's interesting - Proust talks about this, an intonation to show detachment.
As he spoke I noticed, what had often struck me before in his conversations with my grandmother’s sisters, that whenever he spoke of serious matters, whenever he used an expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion upon some important subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise it by using a special intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he had put the phrase or word between inverted commas, and was anxious to disclaim any personal responsibility for it; as who should say “the ’hierarchy,’ don’t you know, as silly people call it.
People have always used air quotes to show they're quoting someone's exact words, and also when they're being sarcastic and making up a quote. It's just hard to tell when people are being sarcastic in text.
I think it's much more preferable that having (not!) next to phrases. Using quotation marks arose because there's no quick way to use a backwards question mark which was the traditional symbol.
