What is the role of bottle cops in today’s society? Do they make sure you’re recycling that Diet Snapple bottle? Do they monitor the number of ounces in a 12-ounce bottle of Aquafina? Perhaps the answer is locked away in the mind of the Yahoo! DIY editor responsible for this little excerpt:
She might also be able to explain why she put the period after the closing quotation mark, when the standard in the U.S. is before it. And perhaps she’ll tell us if “the humans” is different from “humans” or just plain people. The humans seem to be dumping waste into something that resembles the environment. Maybe we should report them to the bottle cops
Terribly Write 
December 6, 2014 at 6:38 pm
The quote marks in this one don’t mark a quote, but are “highlighting” quotes (to which “scare quotes” are related), so the U.S. rule shouldn’t apply here.
Maybe “the humans” is there to distinguish them from all the other life forms that dump waste into the environment.
Though how the bottle cap portrait is a criticism of waste is a mystery to me. It’s reasonably clever, but there’s a thousand or so year history of mosaic art.
December 6, 2014 at 10:28 pm
The U.S. rule for punctuation and quotation marks applies regardless of the meaning of the quotation marks or words within the quotes.
Do you think “the humans” is used to distinguish the culprits from “the aliens”?
When it comes to art (or even “art”), I don’t judge.