Well, another usually knowledgeable and accurate monk gave the attribution elsewhere in the thread and I took it as read.

I considered apologising, but then got to thinking whether it actually makes any difference that PBP doesn't actually recommend the deprecation of all simple quoted strings if people attribute the practice to it?

Regardless of whether it is those that use and promote the practice using PBP as their justifiction; or those that would decry it. If the wider audience's general interpretation is that the practice stems from that source, then it is hard not to lay both the plaudits and blame at it's cover.

Certainly, my impression is that if you go back 6+ years to when I first came here, you never saw the practice. And if you could survey the posts here for those that use it, you'd find that it crept in slowly, but more and more frequently, post the release of PBP.

There is a rich history of legislation being misinterpreted--see "Rights under Common Law"; "citizen's arrest" and a bunch of other urban myths--and a well-worn axiom in the legal world that "if it can be misinterpreted, it will be". That's why most legislation takes so long to draft and is subject to numerous levels of review, checks and balances.

It's also why the imposition of legislation should not be rushed. Take the rafts of laws rushed onto the statute books in western countries immediately post-9/11. Or those (of which I am more familiar) that were hastily pushed through in the UK after significant events: Hungerford 1987; The Dangerous Dogs Act, 1991 etc.

PBP's guidelines may not carry the legal impetuous of national legislation, but the formal codification of what amounts to personal preference, by an influential proponent (even with consultation), into bound-copy, frequently exhibits similar affects. Some will misinterpret the codification; others will raise it's purpose and meaning to that of imperative statute.