Elliot's Microblogging

Imagine if a quote like this example above, which appears to be generated by the forum software, was inaccurate. Imagine someone selected the text, clicked quote, then went and changed the words. That would be really bad, right? And it’d look intentional and easily avoidable. If someone said “I only made small edits that didn’t change the meaning”, that would be a terrible excuse which admits they did it on purpose. You shouldn’t edit the accurate, software-generated quote at all. Or if you have an important reason to edit it, indicate the edits with e.g. square brackets.

I think I view misquotes in general like this (unless they’re old or I otherwise expect them to have been copied from paper). By default, I expect quotes to be just as accurate as when you select text and press “quote” and software handles the rest, or alternatively when you use copy/paste. I think anything worse than that is unreasonable in general for stuff people post on the internet today. My intuitions about quoting were developed after copy/paste existed and were primarily developed by quoting electronic text (e.g. on email lists) not paper books, and when I do quote books today I usually use electronic copies (which are widely available for most books that anyone cares enough about to quote).

My stance on quoting may be aided by modern technology but the concept that quotes shouldn’t change any words is widespread and well known despite not being widely followed. The standard convention of not changing words in quotes is why the square bracket convention for indicating changes to quotes exists.