Grammar Girl- Single Quotation Marks Versus Double Quotation Marks

I asked my student what happened in the movie.  He replied "First, the guy found some transformers.  Then he asked it 'what's your name?'.  Then it said 'Bumblebee.'." and so on.  As you can see, this is an example of how punctuation can get a little messy (period, single quotation, period, double quotation!).
For everyday writing, double quotations are used for quotes (what people say).  They can also be used for titles of things, such as books, movies, etc...  My favorite way to use them is for scare quotes also referred to as sneer quotes  This is when an author is using quotes sarcastically or ironically.  For example, George Zimmerman was acting in the name of "Justice".  They can be used to refer to a word and not its meaning.  A common mistake using double quotations is using them to highlight a special word.  However, as I have just explained scare quotes, by using double quotes in that way, one is just displaying the opposite meaning.
As for the single quotation, it is used in my outdated example to identify a quotation within a quotation.  Here's another example :He said "She said 'banana'.".  It gets even more tricky if a third quotation needs to be nested, as it then goes back to double quotation marks.  Other uses include a quotation within the title of an article and highlighting words not being used for their meaning.
The podcast finishes up with a brief recap on the difference between quote and a quotation.  Quote is a verb- She quoted him accurately.  Quotation is a noun.  I got a great quotation from my professor yesterday.
A lot of this information I knew, but had gotten mixed up over the years.  Especially the quote-quotation difference.  I have been quite guilty of that for years.  Time to get back to "studying"...

Grammar Girl- Fragments

Fragments

Yes, that little green underline that we have all seen in MS Word (or whatever processor you use) is a sentence fragment.  A fragment is an incomplete sentence, for example "Gunfire-everywhere!" .  I have been a culprit of this grammar crime for many years, however I just learned that it is sometimes OK.
 I was quite surprised to hear from the mini-podcast that fragments are acceptable in certain literary situations.  Mostly- fiction (Ha! Here's another).  The benefits of using it are stylistic and economic.  By having short, choppy , fragmented sentences, the author can convey a dramatic mood or even alter the pace.  In addition, the author can save space and let the readers imagination fill in the blanks. 
The negatives are clear too.  It is not traditional grammar and would likely not be acceptable in any academic form.  Although, if I were to write my thesis in a narrative format, fragmenting for stylistic purposes might be possible. Even then, it still runs the risk of coming across as lazy or ignorant.
So, unless I start writing short fiction in my free time, this blog will likely be the only place I will be using fragments.  And I'm sure they will never be done by accident and always done for style ;-)