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Stop defacing quotes with brackets

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Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#41

Post by jusssi »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #27
jusssi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Etiquette is circular logic. 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 import…

> Etiquette is circular logic.

I was tempted to reply to this by throwing etiquette out of window, but that would get me downvoted to hell. Because there is an etiquette.

> Paraphrasing can mangle words so easily. I'm baffled why you would imply otherwise.

When I paraphrase someone, they're my words. Not the original author's. I take responsibility for them.

> And your edit just makes you look stupid.

You're right down there with me. Welcome.

Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#42

Post by ddingus »

kens wrote: post #24
kqr wrote: post #2

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…

The Chicago Manual of Style is fine with that. "Insertions may be made in quoted material to clarify an ambiguity, to provide a missing word or letters, or to give the original foreign word or phrase where an English translation does not convey the exact sense." This is indicated with brackets.

That is exactly how I use them. When quoting critically, doing that makes a lot of sense. It can get confusing and be quite verbose without that particular device.

Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#43

Post by [deleted] »

krackers wrote: post #36
Nition wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw one the other day on a news article where they'd put something like "They took him to hospital [sic]." The journalist hadn't realised that "to hospital" is correct English.

"took him to hospital" sounds very weird. Are you sure that's standard in american english?

[deleted]

Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#44

Post by ddingus »

jusssi wrote: post #41
Dylan16807 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Etiquette is circular logic. 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 import…

> Etiquette is circular logic. I was tempted to reply to this by throwing etiquette out of window, but that would get me downvoted to hell. Because there is an etiquette. > Paraphrasing can mangle words so easily. I'm baffled why you would imply otherwise. When I paraphrase someone, they're my words. Not the original author's. I take responsibility for them. > And your edit just makes you look stupid. You're right do…

So are the words in brackets, and so should be responsibility.

Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#45

Post by Dylan16807 »

kens wrote: post #21
Digit-Al wrote: post #17

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.

It's basically a difference in emphasis between "Note that I didn't add this mistake." and "Note that I didn't add this mistake." so I'm not sure it's really a 'problem' you could point to with the grammatical device.

Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#46

Post by dragonwriter »

kens wrote: post #21
Digit-Al wrote: post #17

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.

> The problem is that "sic" has two uses.

No, it doesn't.

> The standard use is, as you say, to indicate that the text is as it appeared originally,

This is the use.

> and you didn't add a typo.

It is not restricted to things which might be mistaken for typographical errors.

> The common Internet use is to indicate "This is wrong. Har har you're stupid."

It's very common, for some reason, on the internet for people to respond (usually with displaced offense on the part of the not-present author of the quote) as if the standard use had that implication, but I've literally never seen a use which elicited a response indicating that it was taken that way for which there was any reason to believe that it wasn't being used in the completely standard way. I'm not convinced that the second use actually exists.

Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#47

Post by rgossiaux »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #35
hedora wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey now, [he is] one of these people, and [he] most definitely exists! Who? How do you know?

You broke the meaning of that sentence on purpose, you don't get to blame it on the brackets. Look at it done correctly: tomc1985 objects that "[he is] one of these people, and [he] most definitely exists!" You may not like how it looks, but it completely solves the fake issue you were making fun of.

>Look at it done correctly: tomc1985 objects that "[he is] one of these people, and [he] most definitely exists!"

You also need brackets around "exists" since the original quote had "exist". I think you're proving the point. I completely agree with the author that sentences like this are absolutely miserable to read. You can quote him as saying "I am one of these people, and I most definitely exist!" and, because we all have basic reading skills, we all understand that the "I" refers to the person speaking. Mangling quotes with unnecessary brackets is bad writing.

Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#48

Post by gbh444g »

kqr wrote: post #2

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…

Is it a regexp? I'm thinking if we could come up with a especially dense writing style that needs quadratic time to fully understand a sentence. Like you read a sentence of N words and get only a surface level meaning. Then you re-read it and understand a bit more. Repeat it about N times and you get the full picture.

Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#49

Post by midasuni »

krackers wrote: post #36
Nition wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw one the other day on a news article where they'd put something like "They took him to hospital [sic]." The journalist hadn't realised that "to hospital" is correct English.

"took him to hospital" sounds very weird. Are you sure that's standard in american english?

It’s perfectly normal in English English

Re: Stop defacing quotes with brackets

#50

Post by Dylan16807 »

rgossiaux wrote: post #47
Dylan16807 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You broke the meaning of that sentence on purpose, you don't get to blame it on the brackets. Look at it done correctly: tomc1985 objects that "[he is] one of these people, and [he] most definitely exists!" You may not like how it looks, but it completely solves the fake issue you were making fun of.

>Look at it done correctly: tomc1985 objects that "[he is] one of these people, and [he] most definitely exists!" You also need brackets around "exists" since the original quote had "exist". I think you're proving the point. I completely agree with the author that sentences like this are absolutely miserable to read. You can quote him as saying "I am one of these people, and I most definitely exist!" and, because we…

> You also need brackets around "exists" since the original quote had "exist".

That's fair, I put too much trust in hedora's version.

> I think you're proving the point.

I may be demonstrating the article's point, that it looks awkward, but I still strongly disagree with hedora trying to make it look like the subjects get all wonky and confusing.

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