20 ms·
Stop defacing quotes with brackets
- kqr 6y agoThis 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 solution might be to substitute in the subject and just not indicate it with brackets. That certainly reads easier, but risks hiding a common type of misunderstanding.
- johnorourke 6y agoHopped on here to say exactly that! I've never seen it used the way the author describes, only the way you describe.
- jusssi 6y agoNormally one should paraphrase. Quotes are reserved for special cases where that exact way something is said is essential for communicating the message. And the need to add []-blocks is evidence that it doesn't belong to that special class. Edit: All you lazy copy-paste writers downvoting all the comments here that propose paraphrasing instead of quoting: I see you.
- phnofive 6y agoWhy?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jusssi 6y agoSeveral 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.
- Dylan16807 6y agoEtiquette 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 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.
- jusssi 6y ago> 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.
- kens 6y agoThe 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.
- ddingus 6y agoThat 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.
- gbh444g 6y agoIs 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.
- wiml 6y agoNo, I think you're absolutely right, and the author of the Slate piece is a nitwit. Of course it's better to find a quote that can stand alone, but if you can't do that — say, because there's a pronoun that refers to something too far away from the phrase of interest to include — then use brackets, ellipses, and so on.
- loeg 6y agoThey're both right. The Slate article is just picking on an uncommon, mistaken use of the pattern. I agree that it's pointless whining — I don't know that I've ever seen this mistake made.
- BlueTemplar 6y agoWell, the author clearly has, but since I haven't either, this article probably has no place on HN (which seems to have quite a different audience)...
- function_seven 6y agoThe author's point here is different than that, though. The original writer had no need to substitute the pronoun in the short quote. It was replaced with just another pronoun, so no extra information was inserted. It would have been just as clear if left in its original phrasing. From TFA: > Sometimes you have to use brackets anyway. Maybe the speaker or writer was using an acronym or a completely unfamiliar piece of jargon that the reader needs explained. Maybe they were referring to a person by their last name or nickname, when the reader has not yet been introduced to the person’s full name. But these changes should be both necessary and obvious.
- loeg 6y agoThat's the correct use of the pattern and the only way I've seen it used.
- ant6n 6y agoBut why remove the „it“? That changes the quote in a way that’s not marked, since the brackets denote an addition but not a removal. Keeping it would make it clearer what actually happened to the quote, That you merely expand what the „it“ references to, and thus is more trustworthy.
- zeven7 6y agoBrackets often indicate a replacement, which includes a removal of something.
- SamBam 6y agoIt can be done either way. > He said he was going to "post this on HN [Hacker News] right away." Of course, there are often other ways to do that: > He said he was going to "post this on HN right away," referring to the website Hacker News.
- thedufer 6y agoI think this is addressed in the following section: > Sometimes you have to use brackets anyway. Maybe the speaker or writer was using an acronym or a completely unfamiliar piece of jargon that the reader needs explained. Maybe they were referring to a person by their last name or nickname, when the reader has not yet been introduced to the person’s full name. But these changes should be both necessary and obvious. Not quite explicitly, but it isn't a far leap from "referring to a person by their last name or nickname" to pronouns.
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoBracketing acronym's on first use is a totally separate issue.
- greggyb 6y agoAs is creating a plural form by adding an apostrophe. (;
- thedufer 6y agoI was more pointing towards the second half about expanding a nickname or last name into a full name, but I think they're actually closely related as different ways in which the author might be adding context that is missing from the quote.
- Triv888 6y agoYou could also introduce the quote instead of modifying it (you probably are doing that already anyways).
- px43 6y agoIt annoys me when someone gets interviewed, and they make intentionally vague comments to avoid leaking non-public information, and the interviewer fills in the blanks with whatever they think will generate the most clicks, wildly misrepresenting the statement, and giving it a completely different meaning than the interviewee intended.
- interestica 6y ago> It annoys me when someone gets interviewed.... I disagree. I think interviews are critical tool of discourse! (I'm kidding...to your point) I think it's extra prevalent now when there is so much video media that users want to get summarized for them. It takes longer to watch a video than to read a summary from someone whose viewpoint I already align with to make a judgment about the video. This discussion about citation/quoting/primary sources makes me recall university days when (as a student of history) I tried to cite a DVD as a source. But, the professor's required Style guide made no provisions for the media type. Thus, there was pressure to either quote from a book (either written by the person being quoted or from a secondary source quoting the person) rather than transcribing the quote from the visual source I was verifying myself: literally seeing the person I was quoting say the exact words.
- pc86 6y agoThis is the only way I've ever seen them used - in your example, "[the subject]" would be replacing a word like "it" or "something." I seem to recall my English teacher saying it was used (paraphrasing) to change the text of a quote without changing its meaning, and that any other usage was incorrect.
- titzer 6y agoThere is a way to do that by adding context outside the quote but keep the quote verbatim. "It's an older code, sir, but it checks out", the officer said, referring to the stolen access code Han had just provided, stolen from god knows where, god knows how long ago. See, now the original quote is undisturbed and the added context is less authoritative (on purpose), since it is not inserted into the quote. The provenance of all the information is clear. Personally I think the only brackets we should use in quotes are [sic], indicating an error in the original. Otherwise we are on the slippery slope to, "oh, what they really meant to say is [phrase phrase phrase]".
- bobthepanda 6y agoBut now you’ve basically doubled or tripled the length of the whole sentence. The primary usage I see of this is to replace some second or third person pronoun with the actual name of the person, which is much simpler than appending a short biography of the person and trivially easy to verify.
- titzer 6y agoYeah, there is a cost to being precise. We can think of other ways to make it shorter, but we should respect the integrity of what is in quotes. Another option: Spitballing: "It is not worth doing," she said, [it=foobar]. We do this all the time in programming languages. Without introducing too much syntax, this is doable.
- gugagore 6y agoI'd say we only do something like that in programming if there's a benefit to using other values for `it` in other contexts, and if we'd like to refer to a template `"It is not worth doing" by name. If you're just going to use it once, or if all usages have `[it=foobar]`, I don't think you'd do it. I could imagine doing something like what you mention if I had moved code from another context, and I wanted to have a commit that shows plainly that it was moved verbatim. But then I'd make subsequent commit where I do the necessary substitution.
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoWell a native speaker of English should be able to discern the inferred subject. None of the examples should give anyone any problems. How ever there is a question should you take more care in writing when some of your audience has English as a second language?
- airhead969 6y agoYes. The intent has to be honest rather than throwing out a device without nuance. It often seems like black&white reasoning to predicate an article on "why you should start doing this" or "why you should stop doing that." As an additional device, [sic] is also helpful to indicate an original typo or improper usage not by the quoter.
- tomc1985 6y agoHard 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 easy to misuse in a way that changes message or meaning. > Then that someone would be a dolt who does not understand the basic rules of American English punctuation. Stop catering to such a person, who I hope is strictly imaginary! Hey now, I am one of these people, and I most definitely exist!
- exmadscientist 6y agoI'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 prose. (I don't consider snipping or eliding to be editing the quote, unless it is done deceptively to suggest something that was not present in the original. It's just a way to, essentially, make two quotations at once.) If what you suggest was truly necessary, wouldn't most complex dialogue in fiction be incomprehensible? Yet it isn't... unless it gets mangled. As the article's Romeo and Juliet example clearly demonstrates.
- atoav 6y agoIMO using ellipsis [...] or modifying quotes in order to present them in a new context is totally okay, as long as you don't alter the original intended meaning fundamentally by doing so. After all quoting someone at all is already an act of tearing their words out of the context they have been put in by that author. You can misquote someone badly without brackets, while you can quote someone faithfully with brackets.
- Rapzid 6y ago
- hyko 6y agoWell, obviously don’t stop using them altogether; use them correctly.
- leipert 6y ago> 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 brackets are especially helpful if you quote partially and leave out parts of a paragraph and denote it with: [...]
- avh02 6y agoNo No, I prefer the middle ramblings too. My reader should be thrown off track by irrelevant parts of what someone said. /s
- gnicholas 6y agoI'm a former lawyer, and brackets are critical in legal writing. If you are quoting a court case or a brief, you need to be crystal clear about which precise words existed in the source and which ones you added in to make verbs/nouns match up. This is probably also somewhat important in other parts of academia, where precise use of words is important. But it is critical in the legal field.
- hnarn 6y agoDid you read the article? Because it’s not arguing this. Quite the opposite (the need to be clear about what was originally a part of the quote).
- playpause 6y agoThat’s different. The article is about brackets containing substitute words.
- google234123 6y agoThis does remind me that I really dislike when authors insert "sic" inside quotes.
- Digit-Al 6y agoBut how else are you supposed to denote that something is in the original text and not a transcription mistake?
- kens 6y agoThe 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.
- andai 6y agoI've never seen the second usage. Although, shouldn't they be indistinguishable?
- inglor_cz 6y agoInteresting, I never realized that there was this second usage out there. I have always seen "sic" after an obvious grammatic or spelling mistake.
- Dylan16807 6y agoIt'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.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> 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.
- karlerss 6y agoWhy can't "[the bracekts] “[...] be transmitted over news wires.”"?
- kqr 6y agoI can't give a concrete reason, but I suspect they might want to be able to transmit over channels with comparatively little bandwidth/much noise. Shannon taught us that more reliable communication in the face of low bandwidth and/or high noise is only possible with a smaller symbol set.
- Dylan16807 6y agoI could see that in some extraordinarily niche scenarios but if someone has the bandwidth to be transmitting full news articles then they have the bandwidth to use a whole 7 bits per character. And they should be compressing it too, at which point you don't need to restrict less common characters.
- kqr 6y agoThe set of people at the wire transmitting full articles might be different from the set publishing brief facts from low-bandwidth locations. (But it is convenient if they use the same infrastructure for it!) I'm not convinced they would be compressing it. When you have the bandwidth for a full article, size is probably not going to be the problem, and when you don't have the bandwidth, compression is probably counterproductive.
- Dylan16807 6y agoCompression of text is basically never counterproductive as long as you use a suitable design. Even a static huffman tree would help, and has no overhead. An entropy encoder would do very well and only cost a few bits to flush.
- kqr 6y ago
- dschuetz 6y agoI didn't even know it was a thing.
- Digit-Al 6y agoI've always hated those brackets. I never know why they've bracketed the word and what it's supposed to mean. At least now I know it's purpose, but it's still confusing. I absolutely agree with the author's points.
- unethical_ban 6y agoWell now you know: It is to provide clarification, particularly with pronouns that have less context when one part of a quote is lifted into another conversation/article.
- hnarn 6y agoDoesn’t help to know why it’s done if you think it’s wrong. Brackets are already used for non-destructive purposes and this example is destructive.
- torstenvl 6y agoPretty ironic to ascribe purely speculative emotions ("afraid") in the same breath as lambasting others for imprecision in ascribing words. Brackets are necessary to clarify context in a concise way. I doubt I'd use them in the contexts the OP means, but they are invaluable in legal writing. ---- "[Brackets for editorial insertions] are invaluable in legal writing." -torstenvl
- hnarn 6y agoYour example is not what the article is talking about, because it doesn’t change words in the middle of the quote. An example would be: > “[It’s] invaluable in [legalese]” —torstenvl The first part is a shortening/paraphrasing and clearly marked as such. But you didn’t use the word legalese, but I put it in there because I like it better. And that’s wrong. Although personally I would write something outside of the quotes to ease the reader into your direct quote, possibly using brackets or parentheses to signify cuts.
- aimor 6y agoI think the sin is removing words from the quotation. Adding editorial clarifications is sometimes unnecessary and often annoying, but can be read around. However substituting or outright omitting words without noting the removal is indeed "wrong" and "rude".
- mattowen_uk 6y agoAgreed. Imho, the only valid use of brackets in a quote is where the original quoter left out some words due to a colloquial dialect, or just spoke badly, and the editor/author had to add a word or two so that the reader has a more clear understanding of what was said: "house on fire!", Billy-Jo Bob shouted. vs. "[My] house [is] on fire!", Billy-Jo Bob shouted. The use of the quotes makes it clear to the reader, that Billy-Jo didn't actually say the words 'my' and 'is', but they were added for clarification. Any other usage (inside quoted text) is simply wrong.
- valarauko 6y agoI agree with you. Editing a direct quote should be a last resort, with a light touch, and only to provide clarity. Editing quotes for grammatical correctness is going too far, especially if the meaning is self evident to most readers. For the given example, it probably doesn't require editing. If rather Billy-Jo Bob was shouting to his neighbor Joanne about her house being on fire, then yes, adding that context is helpful, and wouldn't be apparent from the quote itself.
- tpoacher 6y ago> "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."
- chrismorgan 6y agoThat 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.”
- undecisive 6y agoWow. The meta-ness of this humour almost defeated me, well played :D 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- marton78 6y agoThis reminds me of how much I hate people saying "quote unquote" followed by what they're quoting. If you really insist on unquoting, please do it where it belongs. However, if you trust me in determining where your quote ends, please spare me the noise.
- valarauko 6y agoYou also gotta do the "air quotes" fingers while saying "quote unquote"
- ddingus 6y agoThe usage the author points out is odd, and one I would never use. However, it is not brackets alone that is an issue. The usage is strange! Begin excerpt: They may groan when Corky, denied the massive funding he’s asked for, tells the town council he’s going to “go home and bite [his] pillow,” the way I do now. End excerpt. The quote with brackets in it appears functionally equivalent to: "go home and bite my [his] pillow." I agree with the author here, and would add calling out the brackets alone is not enough. There are well accepted and clear uses of brackets in quotes that are lumped in with this arguably, dubious construct. I read the article title and thought, "Well, no. Is this some purist argument or other?" Turns out it is not! Standard bracket use is not in question. Not even mentioned. Normal bracket use does not change a quote at all, when done properly. The bracket use the author is bringing to our attention DOES. Go ahead, take a closer look at the full excerpt. Why did they do that? About the only reason I can find for doing it appears to be a potential misunderstanding between "my pillow", as would be quoted, and the ending statement, "The way I do now." Why? The quotes clearly assign "my pillow" to Corky, as opposed to the writer, who post quote says, "I do now", but that is not good enough, apparently. I would call this being too clear at others expense, as well as an insult to the reader, who is likely to wonder just why "[his]" got put in there. Did Corky really tell the town council, "go home and bite pillow" broken English style? Of course not, so why bother with the use of a context or clarification device used to muddy both? Edit: Even worse is the case where Corky actually did speak broken English style, which is now rendered a matter of ambiguity because someone thought muddying up the language would help their prose be more clear! Agree with author on this one. That bracket abuse, and I am going to call it as I see it here, appears to be quite pretentious, while also adding nothing of value and considerable confusion!
- ghusbands 6y agoThe syntax given in the article is standard - a square-bracketed part replaces words in the original text that would otherwise appear there. Your proposed alternative is not standard. (At least one example given in the article is incorrect usage, but the basic principle is normal and widely used.)
- 6y ago
- Rapzid 6y agoI'm hella suspicious, depending on the source, of quotes that have been mangled, shortened, or otherwise stripped of the context provided by the quotees own words. It's classic narrative fabrication to paraphrase bs and use tiny mangled quotes to sell it.
- Illniyar 6y agoI 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 sometimes saying things outloud is messy and not precise) It would never occur to me that the writer will replace a word in an actual quote.
- diamondo25 6y agoI agree with you, if its used as a correction or clarification, I can totally understand that. Especially when people are quoted from what they verbally said, where it sometimes require context. But would the quoted person like that? Maybe you are pulling things out of context and now it looks he/she meant something else...
- GavinMcG 6y ago> I would've assumed Corky said "go home and bite pillow." I think that amounts to an assumption that the author is dishonest. If Corky's speech is broken in that he leaves out "my", the author's addition would be changing the quotation. Brackets can generally be assumed to replace tense (in single-word uses) or to paraphrase (in lengthy uses).
- eqvinox 6y ago> A set of brackets is a barrier to understanding between the reader and the writer. 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.
- jstanley 6y agoThey're not saying "change the quote without indicating that you did", they're saying "don't change the quote".
- eqvinox 6y agoSorry, I forgot to spell out that side since it's _very_ deeply ingrained in me: that would just be bad English. (For the cases where it's possible; there are enough where it makes the quote nonsensical or overly long without bracketing something.) Coincidentally, I'm a German native speaker :D
- nxpnsv 6y agoLearn to enjoy it by turning it into a game : try to maximally distort a quote with a single bracketed word.
- dragonwriter 6y agoThis is bad advice citing comically-bad examples of the practice to criticize the practice. Yes, the specific examples given there are all bad and unnecessary, don't do that. 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.
- sokoloff 6y agoBy quoting with brackets (vs outright paraphrasing), you are staking some trust though. If I do search and find you’ve fabricated the quote, you’ve lost much more credibility than if I find you’ve paraphrased poorly. The latter can be argued to be innocent in a way the former cannot.
- jzer0cool 6y agoI agree there can be an overuse of the brackets. 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=4513192 https://getlibraryhelp.highlands.edu/c.php?g=635153&p=451319...
- blackbrokkoli 6y agoWhile I was reading this rant about erroneous brackets, I was consistently thrown off by the authors wrong styling of links. That is not even snark, the bold read, weirdly placed lines under links kept pulling my eyes in. Apparently, the author removed the (old-fashioned, but agreed upon) typographical underline for links and replaced it by border-bottom, which starts below the descender of the letters instead of the baseline. That way, they look...misaligned. Meanwhile, I never considered the brackets in quotes confusing and found them quite helpful at times, especially when reading particularly old English which is weird enough even if correct. Not sure what the lesson is here, but definitively entertaining.
- monadgonad 6y agoThe author did not do that at all. This is a major magazine; individual contributors are extremely far removed from the website design.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI have always assumed that this was a journalistic (not academic) practice, indicating where what is shown, deviates from the original. I’d assume that kind of thing is important in journalism. But it is ugly. I just think that changing the text without indicating a change, or adding a bunch of text to establish context, is uglier.
- codetrotter 6y agoThe OP is speaking specifically about inside of quote marks though. And I agree with op. Don’t go change me to [him] etc when me is already part of a sentence inside of quotation marks.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI agree with the OP, but journalists have a different priority from other writers of prose. Information accuracy is of paramount importance, with deviance from the original being important to highlight. The other thing they do, is use an ellipsis (…) to indicate excised text. Another issue is that they are obliged to help their audience understand a topic, so paraphrasing, contextualizing, and clarifying are important. Personally, I think that a quote should, indeed, be posted “whole,” but, if that is not done, then brackets (or something like it) should be used. If it is posted “whole,” then it generally needs to have context established for the quote. I prefer “whole,” myself, with context, but I am also rather...prolix. Journalists tend to put a premium on being concise. They usually have a word limit on articles. It’s certainly not something I’m losing any sleep over. My mother was a scientific editor, and her bugaboo was dangling participles. That kind of thing can cause problems in scientific writing, but, in some cases, might make prose easier to read. I tend to "bend" the rules of "proper English," myself. It can be fun, watching pedant heads explode. There was another link someone around here posted, where the author was complaining about how major news organizations were not posting their corrections in a visible manner.
- sneak 6y agoI think worse than this defacement is when someone alters a quote to redact (usually using punctuation) or intentionally misspell "bad" words. Brackets clarify a quote by providing necessary context, and are clearly marked as an alteration. Editing a word to a different word, or intentionally misspelling a word when the quote was not misspelled is actively dishonest.
- comradesmith 6y agoI completely agree and I'm glad I'm not the only one! The point about readers needing to guess what was changed, and why, and how honest the alteration is pin points how I feel when I read quotes which overuse or misuse brackets.
- Guthur 6y agolol, so that's what that's all about. I honestly struggled for ages to understand what it was, it made quotes surprisingly difficult for me to understand. Can't believe I never worked this out, doh.
- alephnan 6y agoThe title had me thinking this was about JSON
- leephillips 6y agoI agree entirely with Scocca; in the example he gives the editing of the quote is unnecessary and silly. But my pet peeve is the incorrect use of parentheses (()) rather than square brackets when editing quotes. People who do this are misquoting.
- chadlavi 6y agoThe author might as well be spitting into the wind. No one cares about your pedantic opinion on a common and grammatically acceptable usage.
- simonh 6y agoAnd yet you presume that others here care enough about your opinion to post it for us. Presumtuous? No, you're entitled to your opinion and so is the author, and it's for the opinions of others that we all come to forums like this.
- mc32 6y agoI agree with the author. Inserting brackets derails the flow. People know what a verbatim quote is. You don’t have to “translate” the pronoun. I’ve seen an uptick in this trend and it’s as welcome as pedantic ‘sics’ inserted into other people’s quotes.
- superjan 6y agoFor best effect you can insert bracketed additions, and add a SIC to point out the spelling error the author did not choose to fix.
- leephillips 6y agoWhat’s the proper way to quote someone who uses square brackets in what you are trying to quote? It seems as if this could get as thorny as the problem of escaping quote marks in quoted strings that besets programmers. For example, in Scocca’s first specimen, how do we know he’s referring to the use of square brackets, or if the square brackets that appear are his own interpolation? The context makes it clear, but in other places it might not be.
- mojomark 6y agoI don't think it's thorny at all... If you're quoting a quote directly from a secondary source (like a 'news' article), and that quote has bracketed content, you should retain the bracketed interpretation and cite the secondary source (as the source of the quoteed material) along with the original source themself (as the source of the unbracketed material). If you suspect the interpretation isn't accurate, you will need to do some digging to either reach out to the reporter to obtain the recording of the original source, or just reach out to the original source themselves in order to hear the same information first hand (which is probably best any way since you could be able to discuss the interpetation with the source directly). If you don't have the time or will power to do all of that digging, then you're relegated to retaining the bracketed interpretated language and citing both the secondary and original sources since the quoted language is now a hybrid of ideas from both sources, delineated by brackets.
- jkingsbery 6y agoThe root behind most (meaningful) objections to bad grammar comes back to clarity - by using poor grammar, the writer obfuscates the meaning of a sentence. In this case, the meaning is perfectly clear, and it is pretty obvious what the original quote is. Writing a whole article nit-picking something like this is obnoxious and silly.
- easton 6y agoThe reason I always did it in school was because we’d have maximum word limits on essays (either due to an evil teacher or time constraints on exams) and copying an entire quote when you only needed the beginning and end would eat up time you could use to write the analysis bits. Maybe I’ll grow out of it (or maybe I already have, given I rarely shorten quotes when writing for fun on the internet).
- Buttons840 6y agoAnd in life there is also a word limit. People want to get back to their cat gifs, etc.
- andrewla 6y agoThe crux of the article is that "[Brackets] are ruining your perfectly good quotes!"
- wombatmobile 6y agoSpecifically, the use of brackets to replace a pronoun that was uttered by the speaker with one that wasn't.
- abstractbarista 6y agoThis article goes against what I was taught all throughout school. I will keep doing what I've been taught.
- eplanit 6y agoI assume your schooling is very recent, as this practice of changing text within quotations is new, and completely wrong. A quote is what was said, verbatim.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- corytheboyd 6y ago> it deploys a completely pointless set of brackets, mangling the wording of the quote, for no good reason. Aaaand that’s enough of that article.
- moistbar 6y agoThe author's decision to link to a Fecal-Age Gawker article with zero substance in the introduction made it very difficult for me to take the rest of the article seriously. That he bases his arguments on something with so little actually being said damages his credibility.
- craftinator 6y agoWhile he does nothing to bolster his credibility, his argument nevertheless stands on its own merritt. If you'd like to respond to that argument, please do so.
- moistbar 6y agoHis argument includes that article, which essentially boils down to "if you're correcting someone's grammar, you're wrong" without taking into account contextual difficulties that may have been caused by said poor grammar." Similarly, the author of TFA ignores most, if not all, arguments regarding contextual clarity.
- jancsika 6y agoSomehow this makes me think of a story about the Bush-era euphemism for torture: "extended interrogation techniques." Everyone on Fox news taught themselves to use this euphemism in smooth, everyday punditry. It spread very quickly. Later, perhaps around the mid 2000s or so, there was some additional talking point added about some prominent Democrat's support for torture after 9/11. Could have been Hilary in a Senate campaign, or Obama, or possibly someone else. I remember eagerly watching all the Fox punditry shows to see how they squared the circle. It was fascinating-- they'd ramp up using the same kind of red-hot rhetoric one would expect for labeling the "other tribe" a hypocrite. But at the climax of their take they would trip over their words, having to actively think to avoid saying "torture" and instead to use the euphemism, "extended interrogation techniques." You could just feel their brains creating all of these effective smears-- "torture apologist," "fan of torture," or whatever-- and then studdering because they couldn't use any of them without admitting what Bush authorized was indeed torture. Does anyone have a clip of any of this? I thought it was fascinating. Anyhow, that initial quote with brackets reminded me of that. I guess the connection is: 1. finding a solution for a narrow problem: obsessively ensuring context and syntax of a quote is always crystal clear, or making oneself feel better about supporting monstrous government crimes 2. being duct taped into a corner when you want to do the thing you care about: write compelling prose, or bark mindlessly into a television camera Edit: use the word "crimes" instead of "misbehavior" (Damn, that euphemisic propaganda is effective!)
- wool_gather 6y agoIt doesn't really affect your point, but the term was "enhanced", not "extended". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniq...
- jancsika 6y agoAh, thanks.
- valarauko 6y ago> Somehow this makes me think of a story about the Bush-era euphemism for torture: "extended interrogation techniques." Is this the Mandela effect at work, or do I recall them being "Enhanced interrogation techniques"?
- valarauko 6y agoI'm confused. I'd assumed that brackets in quotes were to add words for the sake of clarity, not substitute them. So I would have assumed the original quote to have been "go home and bite pillow". In such cases, is there a different style (perhaps different brackets?) to indicate an insertion rather than a substitution?
- ddingus 6y agoMaybe the best thing here is to ask questions non stop. "cry into [his] pillow." Did they really say, "cry into pillow?" No? Why is the quote incorrect? Was that really necessary?
- samgranieri 6y agoPersonally, I don't mind seeing brackets in quotes, although I use parentheses instead. What I really would like to see stopped is using curly quotes or apostrophes.
- hnarn 6y agoI agree wholeheartedly for the simple reason that the example in the article is destructive. It doesn’t only alter the quote, it reduces it. In my mind brackets, or sometimes parentheses, should only be used to add information to assist the reader. To remove a word and replace it with another within brackets is in my mind fundamentally and thoroughly wrong. Personally I use “(…)” to signify cuts, or “[word]” to include a word missing in the quote, but is necessary to avoid the language being annoying to read. I would never dream of changing words in a quote to fit my own text.
- lenkite 6y agoThis author will really love [LitRPG] then.
- MrYellowP 6y agoI'm not being insecure for correcting someone's language. Language is important and so is its correct usage. Dare I say the one who doesn't want to be educated is the insecure one, because he can't stand being reminded of requiring education.