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This does remind me that I really dislike when authors insert "sic" inside quotes.
But how else are you supposed to denote that something is in the original text and not a transcription mistake?
Hard disagree, the shift in perspective from third-person to the first-person quote is jarring. You use the brackets to mold the quote into the grammatical context of the sentence that surrounds. Extra emphasis on the context of the grammar , as changing the overall context alters its message. You can also use those brackets to cut out unnecessary/irrelevant/extraneous words. A necessity, sometimes, and one that is e…
This does not address the primary way I (ab?)use these brackets: to fill in the subject explicitly when the original author refers to it only implicitly. So quoting the last clause in the above paragraph, I might write > when the author refers to [the subject] only implicitly. The obvious alternative is to quote a longer passage. Maybe this is one of those cases where conciseness fights with authenticity. Another sol…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But how else are you supposed to denote that something is in the original text and not a transcription mistake?
The problem is that "sic" has two uses. The standard use is, as you say, to indicate that the text is as it appeared originally, and you didn't add a typo. The common Internet use is to indicate "This is wrong. Har har you're stupid." Many people don't realize the first usage exists.
Hard disagree, the shift in perspective from third-person to the first-person quote is jarring. You use the brackets to mold the quote into the grammatical context of the sentence that surrounds. Extra emphasis on the context of the grammar , as changing the overall context alters its message. You can also use those brackets to cut out unnecessary/irrelevant/extraneous words. A necessity, sometimes, and one that is e…
Who? How do you know?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
Several reasons. Etiquette. Less reason mangle the words of others (arbitrarily cutting something out of larger context can also easily mangle). Let's your reader see how you understood the communication, not just that you found it somewhere and copy-pasted it in.
A larger quote would still be arbitrarily cut out of a larger context. If you're extending past the good part purely to get a subject I'd even say it ends up more arbitrary.
Unless you're taking a test, you don't need to prove you understood it, and if your reader lacks confidence in your understanding then paraphrasing makes the problem worse! Instead of merely worrying you missed important context, now they have to worry you completely altered the meaning.
Paraphrasing can mangle words so easily. I'm baffled why you would imply otherwise.
And your edit just makes you look stupid.
Why can't "[the bracekts] “[...] be transmitted over news wires.”"?
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code#ITA_2_and_US-TTY
There was a time before ASCII, you know...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
Several reasons. Etiquette. Less reason mangle the words of others (arbitrarily cutting something out of larger context can also easily mangle). Let's your reader see how you understood the communication, not just that you found it somewhere and copy-pasted it in.
Disagree; adding context or identifying of an unusual pattern as part of the quote is common practice
> Less reason...
> Let’s [sic] your reader see...
These two points are at odds with each other - and how would my reader understand the contrast between the source and my interpretation without knowing the source?
> I have been told that this bracketing fetish may come from academia, where formal rules of writing are a kind of hazing and where sounding faintly like a space alien could be mistaken for rigor. The academics are also wrong to do it. Presumably they believe it’s OK to vivisect quotations because the reader can always go to their footnotes and look up the original text to see what it actually says. I disagree. The b…