A number of you have been linking to the glorious Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks, which is indeed truly teeth-grinding.

I have a humble example of a similar nature from my daily work to entertain you with. I get a regular news summary about country X, which is produced by officials from country Y, which does not officially recognise country X. The news summaries therefore refer to the "president", the "prime minister" and the "government", all in quotation marks. Country Y also questions the legitimacy of the "university" in country X, which can lead to amusing references to "students". Yes, I've encountered "students" in my time, too, and not only in country X...