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Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

tomc1985

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 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!

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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 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.

IMO 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.

> as long as you don't alter the original intended meaning fundamentally by doing so

Yeah but that's almost always what's happening when you see those tiny quotes; the author is pushing a narrative and using a sound it to sell it. Particularly in political news and places like Slate..

No it isn't.

If $Author writes: "The foundations of the notion of fluid modernity (as outlined in the previous chapters) is fundamentally the simultaneity of dichotomies".

And I quote them as: "The foundations of the notion of fluid modernity [...] is fundamentally the simultaneity of dichotomies". I am not in any way changing their intended message. The author in that case reminded their reader about something they read in the previous chapter, something my readers cannot be reminded of, unless they also read the book recently. Therefore skipping that part with an ellipsis arguably would even be in the interest of $Author, because it isn't their quote that throws my readers off without $Author's fault.

This is just one example. Another very typical case would be if I'd write about $Person and quote someone who wrote "Jules Favre traveled to Königsberg in 1871 to negotiate peace with the Prussians, where he was met with ..."

Then if I'd write in the context of my text: "[He] traveled to Königsberg in 1871 to negotiate peace with the Prussians, where he was met with ..." wouldn't this again be totally okay if it improves readability in the context of my text?

The stuff I outline here is extremely common in theoretical, philosophical or historical texts. The existence of abusive misquoting doesn't mean one cannot use brackets in a responsible and good way (and you can also misquote without brackets).

This might be a language dependent thing. In my native language, Finnish, I don't think I've ever seen a quoted passage, quote marks intact, edited to grammatically fit in a sentence. A quote is a verbatim reproduction, a holy thing. Rather, you would work your sentence to accommodate for the quote. If you cannot do that, you'll leave out the quotes, and they are your words instead of a quote.

Just because a quote doesn't fit your favourite sentence may not mean that you “shouldn't be using that quote”.

Do Finnish words have "tense"?

Simply wrong according to who? You? The MLA[0]? Some other "authoritative" source?

Why is your third paragraph in parenthesis? Using your own logic, you should either remove that paragraph or re-write it without parenthesis.

I could go on, but it doesn't matter because I understand what you are saying. Writing is about conveying meaning in a chain of endless signifiers, "words, words, words..." On one hand, this is utterly impossible if we nitpick to hell, on the other, it's an amazing piece of technology that works because of convention, which you and the author eschew.

"Ah yes, convention, that's why we shouldn't be using brackets in quotes becau..."

0. https://style.mla.org/removing-letters-empty-brackets/

>If what you suggest was truly necessary, wouldn't most complex dialogue in fiction be incomprehensible?

...no?

Fiction (or really any prose) has context and continuity, so it doesn't need to disambiguate. Context and continuity are lost when an excerpt is lifted as a quote. Hence the usage of [brackets].

Since this is painfully obvious, I'm struggling to see what did you mean to illustrate by referring to "complex dialogue"?

I should have mentioned I was coming from a reporting context. The AP style guide we were held to found it to be permissible.

I agree that in fiction or other forms of prose, that the writer should try and mold the surrounding context to fit the quote. But when I did journalism I didn't always have a lot of time to do so. If you're using quotes heavily, from a variety of sources, not all of them are going to fit -- you can either spend a long time rewriting your text until you get it right, or you can do some selective editing and preserve the flow without having to refactor your entire piece.

That said I don't have a hard rule about switching perspective. If you can make it work without bracketing quotes, great! But it's one of those things you have to handle with care, and isn't always practical. Hence, brackets.

> Editing a quote should be done with grave solemnity -- you are changing someone else's words

Editorial interpolation isn't changing someone else's words, it's explicit, clearly delineated, paraphrasing.

> I don't consider snipping or eliding to be editing the quote,

It absolutely is editing, which is why it also is usually also marked by explicit editorial marks in brackets just as editorial interpolation is, except when you are snipping from the beginning or end of the quote, and even then may be marked if you aren't doing so at natural breaks in the source text.

As for interpolation, you use explicit marks to show that you've done it, and in either case it is wrong to do it to change the meaning.

The cost of that bracket abuse is people, having a reasonable command of the language, wondering whether the person quoted actually spoke in a broken English fashion.

The higher order cost is worse!

Breaking well accepted grammar, so that it is now unclear what was actually said both in the future and for readers consuming past works, just so it flows better?

Doesn't english already have a perfectly good way to support "molding the quote into the grammatical context"?

For example, if you don't like:

He said, "I will go to the city."

You can use:

He said that he would go to the city.

Quotes are useful because the text they surround can be ungrammatical or even contain non-words, for example phonetically describing dialect.

To be consistent you would have to insist that words in quotes should always conform to the grammatical context. This would make many current (useful) uses of quotes incorrect.

Often molding the quote to the 'grammatical context' simply means you've added too much anyway. For example, saying 'he says he's going to <quote>' which requires modification of the quote, vs. dropping it entirely: 'he says <quote>'.

"molding the quote to the 'grammatical context'"

That's called "paraphrasing", and is distinct from quoting, because a quote is what was actually said.

"mold the quote"

Are you quoting them, or not?

Which is it?

Seriously.

Quoting the meaning, not the words.

We do not quote meanings.

Quote is a literal expression, verbatim. Or it is a precise statement, form of contract, part of offer and acceptance.

Perhaps you intended something else?

Hey there naysayers! :D

Care to provide an example where we quote meaning?

I will read with great interest!

what's the point of quoting if you are paraphrasing?

Quotation lends more authority than paraphrase, and the original language may be important, precise, or eloquent.

I'm with you bigtime. I suspect some people on the other side of this question are not gramatically sensitive, or they are super literalist about the purpose of quotation.

> 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.

> 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.

Done correctly is keeping the quote very close to the original and changing your text to make that work, instead of the other way around. Much better is:

tomc1985 objects: "I am one of these people, and I most definitely exist!"

> Hey now, I am one of those people, and I most definitely exist!

Who? How do you know?

The problem you’ve presented has nothing to do with brackets or changed words; the same problem is there even with the original words (as above), when the quote is given without attribution as in your example.

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