  According to Davidson, quotation marks are what are used to do the referring. They are descriptions containing demonstratives whose uses refer to whatever pattern is instantiated by the demonstrated token. This makes the presence of quotation marks essential. Much recent work on quotation argues that we can quote (or do something quote-like) without quotation marks and that a theory of quotation should be capable of explaining how quotation can take place in the absence of quotation marks. Here is Reimer’s version of this objection: