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No, a set of brackets is a sign of respect for the original author who didn't spell their statement to match the writer's situation.
Any change to a quote that isn't clearly indicated would make me very, very suspicious whether the writer is misrepresenting what the original author said.
But that's not what bracketed editorial interpolation is for, and editorial interpolation isn't, as the article (paraphrasing the AP manual) pretends, an alternative to paraphrasing, it's a mechanism of paraphrasing which makes explicit what is paraphrased and what is preserved exactly. Used well, it preserves the important parts of quote while maintain flow around paraphrases necessary to preserve meaning from context in the source that was omitted. E.g., replacing a pronoun with it's referent/antecedent when including the portion of the text that provides it in a way which preserved the relationship would require a much longer quote with more material extraneous to the purpose for which it is being quoted.
The comments about trust are kind of dumb. If I use quotes with no editorial interpolation, I ask just as much trust as I do with editorial interpolation: I could, after all, just be inventing thee quote whole cloth, or presenting it accurately but misleadingly out of its original context. The only way to be sure that I haven't misrepresented the origin, text, or sense of the quote—whether or not I have marked interpolations in it—is to check the source, both to find the quote and understand it's context.
As are the bits about exact text search: it is extremely rare that editorial interpolation will fail to leave enough unique uninterrupted text to allow an exact text search to take you to the right part of the source material if the original source is exposed to online full-text search in the first place.
HOWEVER:
Writer should find balance on why brackets within quotes is used in the first place. Many times, the quote itself may lose context. So in addition to a the source of the quotes, you may substitute words within the bracket.
Examples also include replacing a block of words with [...] to skip long passages for example, substitute other words to fill context for the reader.
This is an MLA notation: https://getlibraryhelp.highlands.edu/c.php?g=635153&p=451319...
I know why Brackets are used in quotes - usually to add a subject that wasn't in the original quote but was obvious from the context, which is missing in the quote. I've seen these used a few times in the weirdest places and I just assumed the person who originally said the words mixed things up - so in the example quote given in the article I would've assumed Corky said "go home and bite pillow." (cause you know som…
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…
Are you quoting them, or not?
Which is it?
Seriously.
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…
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…
I'm sorry, but you are simply wrong. Quotes are, well, quotes , and if their grammar absolutely needs to be edited to fit your prose, then that means you shouldn't be using that quote. Editing a quote should be done with grave solemnity -- you are changing someone else's words -- and only to clarify meaning that was disturbed when you extracted the quote from its natural context. Anything else can be handled in your…
Just because a quote doesn't fit your favourite sentence may not mean that you “shouldn't be using that quote”.
> "People who correct other people’s language are invariably rude, are almost always transparently insecure, and are very, very often wrong." Reminded me if this funny quote: "I hate people who generalise; like, all white middle-class heterosexual men, for example."
That second part completely ruins the pithiness of the saying. It’s much better as just “I hate people who generalise.” Or, if you really feel the need to be explicit about the humour, “I hate people who generalise. All of them.”
Could have been the deadpan nature of the joke, or maybe it's just because I'm tired. Maybe it's because people correcting things badly because they fundamentally don't understand them is a pet peeve.
But maybe also because I don't recognise top-posted quotes as being part of the body of a work. Some how, my brain slots it into its own little area "this is simply context you need to know to understand the author's statement - not something the author wanted to communicate directly to you" - so by the time I had finished reading the quote, and the commentary on the quote, I had forgotten what the quote actually says.
I wonder if that's an argument for re-voicing square brackets - it forces you to read the quote in the voice of the author, maybe then my brain would treat the comment as a whole.
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…