Quotation marks - Is there any incoherence in these examples from Wikipedia?

My question is not about the use of quotation marks, single or double. It's about this paragraph from Wikipedia.

If quotation marks are used, it is sometimes the practice to distinguish between the quotation marks used for speech and those used for mentioned words, with double quotes in one place and single in the other:

• When Larry said, "That has three letters," he was referring to the word 'bee'.

• With reference to "bumbershoot", Peter explained that 'The term refers to an umbrella.'

I don't understand the use of quotation marks in the examples: 'bumbershoot' looks like a mentioned word to me and "the term refers to an umbrella" is speech. Have I missed something?

I understand that most people don't make such a distinction (single x double) but that is not what the question is about. It's all about coherence in the examples.

Solution 1:

What the examples are meant to demonstrate (and quite well, I think) is that (1) while there is no standard that dictates that words or speech must always be enclosed in one type of quotation mark or the other (2) for the purposes of analytical clarity, it helps to alternate between the two types to distinguish speech from highlighted words. The examples show that it doesn't matter if you decide that speech should be enclosed in single quotes and words in double quotes, or vice versa, but it's the act of alternating between the two (regardless of how you chose to split them) that provides analytical clarity. The reader quickly sees that one type of quote denotes speech and the other type denotes words.

Solution 2:

Wikipedia doesn't mean that there's a specific rule as to when to use double and when to use single. It just means that in order to avoid confusion, people will use both to differentiate. They might use double for quotes and single for words or the other way around; what matters is that words and quotes are clearly distinguishable from one another.