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To Stet Or Not To Stet, That Is the Question
theodp writes "The NY Times' Virginia Heffernan confesses to being stumped by how to excerpt the language on message boards and blogs. For example, Heffernan notes she could quote kavya on Yahoo Answers word for word ('How is babby formed? How girl get pragnent?'), but worries that doing so makes kavya look like an idiot rather that the sweetly earnest 7-year-old that he or she might be. Is it better to paraphrase or revise the question into 'How is a baby formed?' For now, Heffernan is going to let things stand (stet) and treat message boards like novels, preserving idiosyncrasies of language as far as possible and taking them as intentional — a 'wuz' on the Internet remains 'wuz' in the paper."
I have a sic feeling I know the answer.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
Traduttori traditori; "translators are traitors".
How is babby formed?
*boggle* !
I always thought the marker for material being quoted as it was spoken or written was [sic].
For example,
'John be [sic] tripping. He always [sic] doin' shit like that.'
In this case, the [sic] denotes the use of the infinitive of the copula verb in African-American English Vernacular (AAEV) to mean a habitual action; the second is used to mark the elision of the copula verb in the sentence.
Just my two cents' worth (former English grad student and undergrad seminar leader/paper grader).
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
The Gettysburg Address:
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N0w w3 4r3 3n6463d 1n 4 6r347 c1v1| w4r, 73571n6 wh37h3r 7h47 n4710n, 0r 4ny n4710n 50 c0nc31v3d 4nd 50 d3d1c473d, c4n |0n6 3ndur3. W3 4r3 m37 0n 4 6r347 b477|3-f13|d 0f 7h47 w4r. W3 h4v3 c0m3 70 d3d1c473 4 p0r710n 0f 7h47 f13|d, 45 4 f1n4| r3571n6 p|4c3 f0r 7h053 wh0 h3r3 64v3 7h31r |1v35 7h47 7h47 n4710n m16h7 |1v3. 17 15 4|70637h3r f1771n6 4nd pr0p3r 7h47 w3 5h0u|d d0 7h15.
Bu7, 1n 4 |4r63r 53n53, w3 c4n n07 d3d1c473 -- w3 c4n n07 c0n53cr473 -- w3 c4n n07 h4||0w -- 7h15 6r0und. 7h3 br4v3 m3n, |1v1n6 4nd d34d, wh0 57ru66|3d h3r3, h4v3 c0n53cr473d 17, f4r 4b0v3 0ur p00r p0w3r 70 4dd 0r d37r4c7. 7h3 w0r|d w1|| |177|3 n073, n0r |0n6 r3m3mb3r wh47 w3 54y h3r3, bu7 17 c4n n3v3r f0r637 wh47 7h3y d1d h3r3. 17 15 f0r u5 7h3 |1v1n6, r47h3r, 70 b3 d3d1c473d h3r3 70 7h3 unf1n15h3d w0rk wh1ch 7h3y wh0 f0u6h7 h3r3 h4v3 7hu5 f4r 50 n0b|y 4dv4nc3d. 17 15 r47h3r f0r u5 70 b3 h3r3 d3d1c473d 70 7h3 6r347 745k r3m41n1n6 b3f0r3 u5 -- 7h47 fr0m 7h353 h0n0r3d d34d w3 74k3 1ncr3453d d3v0710n 70 7h47 c4u53 f0r wh1ch 7h3y 64v3 7h3 |457 fu|| m345ur3 0f d3v0710n -- 7h47 w3 h3r3 h16h|y r350|v3 7h47 7h353 d34d 5h4|| n07 h4v3 d13d 1n v41n -- 7h47 7h15 n4710n, und3r 60d, 5h4|| h4v3 4 n3w b1r7h 0f fr33d0m -- 4nd 7h47 60v3rnm3n7 0f 7h3 p30p|3, by 7h3 p30p|3, f0r 7h3 p30p|3, 5h4|| n07 p3r15h fr0m 7h3 34r7h.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
LMFAO.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Current practice for verbal quotes:
If the person is a high-status, middle-aged white person, edit out all "umms", "ahhs", spelling mistakes, restatements, etc.
If the person is under 30, leave in all 'likes', 'ya knows', etc. If they are of appropriate class or race, feel free to transcribe all '-ing' endings as '-in', too.
So just follow this practice. Be sure to clean up high-status people if they are drivelling on, while doing verbatim quotes from teenagers, poor people, etc.
I'm not opposed to leaving excerpted web errors in print, but for some reason I really detest seeing it on television, especially TV news. Here in Los Angeles I recently saw a local news report that was highlighting Internet sentiment on gas prices, and when they showed misspellings and poor grammar, it really annoyed me - I considered it to be lowering quality of the segment. My view is probably based largely on the fact that the newscaster was reading off these opinions with so much seriousness and gravity (which a good newscaster should normally do). I'd rather have intelligent posts discussed or none at all.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
We need a better system for referencing the contents of Websites. Perfect example: the link to Yahoo Answers in the summary is already broken. It's of little use quibbling over the language if the original is lost.
To make matters worse, the referencing styles reek of the hammer-nail syndrome. Websites are NOT periodicals, but every citation style treats them as such. Author's full name? Title of Periodical^WWebsite? And what use is the access date if we don't have reliable archiving (or time machines)?
I think we need, at the very least, to set up reliable archiving before we can tackle any other citation questions raised by the nature of the Web. Perhaps a central, trustworthy source could copy a single page at request along and add metadata (date/time of archival, etc.), and then cite that?
All I'm saying is that the citation standards have more pressing problems. "Babby" versus "baby" doesn't make a lick of difference if the link cited gets you "This question has been deleted."
Actually, I believe kavya's poor English is due to the fact that he/she seems to be in Pakistan, based on the other questions on the account. Also explains kavya's less-than-informed understanding of human reproduction.
I originally had a rant planned for this post, but it would have made me come off as an even more egalitarian prick than usual. Acronyms and abbreviations, in games, I can understand. Time is limited, and sometimes so is the text input space. Doing it when there's plenty of time and space to type properly just makes people look like idiots. I also loathe reading a conversation with someone who has all of their smilies on plain text cues, instead of inside hyphens or parentheses. I prefer to read text, not a rebus
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
OK, I know I'm older than God, but there must be other people around who remember or have read the "dialect" renderings in stories and novels. I'm thinking of anything between, say, "Honestly, Miz Scyallet, ah don' know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies..." all the way to "We don't need no steenking badges..." That includes a lot of childrens' stories that have now thankfully been banished.
What it boiled down to was that if your skin was dark, or you were "foreign," your speech was rendered as "dialect" by some white person somewhere. Seeking kavya's question quoted verbatim somehow transports me back in time. Even the use of "sic" seems somehow to say, "I know this is a deviation from standard English. I just want you to know I didn't originate it, and I'm literate enough to know the difference."
I almost (but not quite) think I might prefer just having the conversation related to me. Or, as an earlier commenter has said, throw the whole thing out and find a better way to cite Web comments.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
You can use square brackets to indicate a change for grammar or spelling, can't you? "How is babby formed? How girl get pragnent?" becomes "How is [a baby] formed? How [does a] girl get [pregnant]?"
I would not change a written text without indicating so, ever. If it's reasonably clear and doesn't make the original look dumb or silly, don't change it.
A (sic) always seemed to me like "Sigh, yes, I know it's spelled wrong. Don't blame me. It's their fault." It seems vaguely rude.
My Son has an email-pal, some neighbour kids who moved away and now live out on Chatham Island and they have irregular email contact, but he writes his own letter and I type them in for him and a scan of any art- I leave all grammer and spelling as his as it is his work - and he has some grate fonetik spelling in some of them 8)
Why change things the original speakers did not care about? What's funny about they way they talk? At it's worse, it represents a lack of rules from a lack of education. That is a shame the internet may correct. Insisting on conformity is something that will be corrected by global justice.
Not everyone has the privilege of that education which includes slavish language conformity to those currently with wealth and power. Shakespeare's plays preserve artful English for a 15th century English lawyer. Most people familiar with the rules of Standard English, as practiced in the North East of the United States in the late 20th century, would consider Shakespeare "moronizing," whatever that means.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
When I was in J-school, it was made pretty clear to us: If there's a typo or misspelling and correcting it doesn't change the intent, fix it. If changing the quote to correct deficiencies in grammar, etc. would subtract from the reader's ability to understand or get a glimpse of the speaker's personality, don't change it. Not overly complicated.
Bark less. Wag more.
Crivens y' ken it does too.
Tha's hit th' nail reet on head, tha 's.
as if a million grammar nazis cried out in torment and were silenced at once
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
of human stupidity (that is the Internet) is coming to an end. Expect all of your webservers to spit out "42" any time now.
Damn right they should quote verbatim. I'm sick of people saying proper grammar and spelling doesn't matter because "it's only the internet" - maybe if they think their illiterate scribble could be quoted in a national newspaper they'll take a little more care with it.
(Mind you, I refused to send an SMS for 15-20 years until I finally got hold of a phone with a qwerty keyboard, so you're welcome to ignore me.)
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
It's not difficult to use a "spell checker". Everyone makes punctuation and grammar errors, but I think what we have to establish is "When is a phonetic use of the English language appropriate?" and thats because poorly smelt words validates that poor smelling.
Sometimes it's laziness, haste or a typo but, I wonder how this discussion will change when use of voice recognition becomes commonplace for computer lusers?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
...absolutely superb novels that accurately depict the different dialects in England. That has nothing to do with skin colour, origin, or ethnicity. Since it is typically the author's own dialect that is depicted accurately, it is very likely not prejudice against that region, either. Oh, certainly, I'd question some use of dialect, but even someone as prejudice as Enid Blyton did not use them maliciously. Oh, some American authors might, but even some of the best-known examples of American authors who have used dialects in writing have done so to be historically or geographically correct, or to highlight prejudice, not to exacerbate it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
it's = it is
I have a feeling that the Dear Abby column in the paper makes a practice of it -- if not, she sure seems to attract letters from an awfully articulate lot of pre-teens.
If Heffernan were quoting published works, that's one thing, but she should treat Internet postings (blog, forum, etc.) like letters to the editor or to a newspaper column - edit them as necessary. Besides, just about every 'letters to the editor' section of a periodical includes the disclaimer that the publisher reserves the right to edit letters for grammar, space or clarity, so one can reasonably conclude that the practice is a common one.
to do way instain mothers who kill thier babbys because these babby can't frihgt back?
As far as print media is concerned, I would say it's required to quote them as is, though why I think different standards apply in either case, I couldn't tell you. One difference would be that if you're on-line it's usually relatively easy to thread your way back to the original if you really care.
Did no one notice the spelling error "rather that" in the summary? And started swearing at author? Amazing! This Internet thing you hear so much about these days might turn out to be a polite discussion forum after all.
Quotations transcribed from informal spoken communications (interviews, phone conversations, etc.) are typically cleaned up. Verbal tics, stuttering and "um"s and "er"s are omitted, minor grammatical errors corrected, etc. Great care must be taken not to change the speaker's meaning, however. It is very embarrassing (and professionally damaging) when such mistakes are made.
These are all normal features of informal speech but, by reproducing them verbatim, you run the risk of unfairly discrediting your source. So, unless the speech irregularities are relevant to the story (for instance, if the story is about George W. Bush's pronunciation), you would change "nucular" to "nuclear."
Published material (books, articles, etc.) are normally stetted, with few exceptions.
Blogs and the like fall somewhere between verbal communication and published material. It is something of a gray area.
I would say that, unless the use of nonstandard English in online communications is relevant to the story, the editor should follow the paper's policy regarding verbal communication.
Otherwise, the paper risks being seen as trying intentionally to discredit blog sources. All kinds of paranoid motivations for MSM's perceived desire to discredit bloggers would be attributed.
On the other hand, in editing a blogger, the editor opens himself/herself up to all kinds of accusations as well.
So, as normal, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Just another day in the life of a newspaper editor.
The [www] tag would be used in place of [sic].
Anytime someone quotes a web forum, blog, or otherwise, you could utilize the tag broadly or specifically. For example, at the being of an AC quote, just putting a single [www] would indicate everything you needed to know. However, if the post was well constructed with only one or two issues, you could use them in the appropriate places. Alternatively, we could use a [www] blah blah [/www] style standard to encase any quantity of [www] related ridiculousness.
[www source="7 year old girl"]i is want know baby formedd?[/www]
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
It's "grammar". The fact that you aren't copy-editing those letters is probably for the best.
In the case of verbal communication things that might make some sense spoken make people sound like gibbering fools when written down (See Don Rumsfeld or Australia's Brendan Nelson - in fact, try just about any politician). This doesn't necessarily mean that they are gibbering fools, when speech is stripped of natural pauses and inflections it is harder to understand.
The use of [sic] is not great because it draws particular attention to the error. It's basically used to make fun of somebody's ignorance. Sometimes this is the writer's purpose but it's not really fair on the person your quoting, particularly for a journalist.
I had to deal with this problem extensively when working in Market Research. There is a responsibility to present quotes verbatim - particularly in a written survey, but also in telephone surveys. But when the respondent's point is unclear in a verbatim quote you don't do the client any great service by leaving complicated sentence structure or ambiguities in when you are able to determine what they really meant.
The best response is somewhere halfway and while we sometimes put in [illegible] or [inaudible] we would never use [sic]. It's disrespectful to the person providing the quote.
- Just trying to survive until the nanobots make me immortal -
If you don't have either the fertility_natural or fertility_assisted module loaded it won't work. Note the fertility_assisted module requires additional parameters:
Babby::Babby(Sperm dad, egg mom, Clinic clinic, Payer payer, uterus surrogate)
with the last parameter optional.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
whoooosh (I can't believe you got modded 5 funny)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When the words of a speaker of a different language is "quoted", it's always translated, with all the problems that entails. When the distance is in "kilometers", it's translated to "miles"; when the currency is in "Euros", it's translated into "dollars", etc.
Many times I wish they didn't so blithely translated the units of measure or currency. And I wish they didn't translate the language either -- except I now would have to be fluent in most of the major languages of the world!
And so when it comes to chat speak, it could be put into a language class of its own. Will a "general" (read: non-Internet-literate) audience understand it? Probably not, though sometimes they may.
I personally could never be a professional journalist, because I lean much more towards quoting directly, not "writing down" to an LCD readership, etc. You ought to be intelligent and informed enough to understand the difference between baryonic matter and non-baryonic matter, right???
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
How is this make to /. front page?
Obviously the best choice is stet. The corrected versions are hardly funny at all! But, "How girl get pragnent" - priceless comedy.
Most often when [sic] is used it is meant to show the person being quoted as being too stupid to get it right. "This ain't my mistake, it was the original idiot who wrote it like this". Editors do correct language all the time, it is their job. Unless there is a pressing need to preserve the original quote you shouldn't carry over grammar errors. In the case of asking how babies are formed, there is no need to carry over the errors as there is no value in them. Only quote directly when it is needed.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Currently, the world practices the opposite. The notes of Bush's press conferences are regularly scrubbed of Bushisms. People of power and authority should be held to a high standard. But why ridicule someone who doesn't know any better whether it is a child or a poster for whom English isn't the first language? If you are worried about precision, you can always do your own paraphrase without quotes.
I know its more fashionable to delegate your professional judgment and standards to some committee-spawned set of arbitrary and simplistic rules, but the only sensible answer to a question like this is "it depends".
You consider the quote, the context you are quoting it in and the inferences you are drawing from it, and make a judgment as to whether "correcting" it would amount to misrepresentation.
In the case of "how babbey formed? how girl get pragnent?" the implication that the writer may be young, communicating in a second language or just have limited literacy skills (none of which would make me assume they were an idiot, by the way) might be highly relevant to (say) a discussion on the role of social networking in sex education. For one thing (based purely on that quote) can you really be sure whether Kavya was asking "can I get pregnant from kissing a boy" or struggling to frame "What happens after the sperm reaches the ovum?"
On the other hand, if the writer has simply made a typo or misplaced an apostrophe, it is probably sensible to fix it to prevent the argument being grammar-Godwinned.
If you're transcribing speech, then doing a bit of "cleaning up" seems, um, reasonable to me, er, because because hesitations and repeat, er, repetitions that you ign.., er, hardly notice when er, listening to someone speak might have undue prominence when, um, written down.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
He's always doin' [sic] shit like that.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Some of the spelling issues I've seen on forums revolve around the fact that English is not the posters main language. Of course the other issue is the fact that the United States is graduating high school students who are functionally illiterate and unable to perform simple math (add/subtract) or even reason through a problem.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
lol wut
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
... an idiot, of course!
Usage of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic, a latin word which means "just as that."
Or you can include edits in your presentation "How [does a] girl get [pregnant]?" You can use it to add, delete or modify the original quote to convey clarity to the reader.
Both ways are common and accepted by the editing world. Personally with the number of mistakes that a seven year old would be reasonably expected to make the first is preferred over the second and it would be even better to paraphase.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Why should a newspaper be quoting blog entries at all, must less illiterate ones? They have no news value.
I piss off bigots.
The conventions for this situation already exist, if you pay attention when you read the newspaper, magazines, or even high school English. You have 2 choices when quoting someone in print: you can quote exactly what they say, or you can summarize. When quoting exactly what someone says in a written document, you use quotation marks and write their exact words. You should stick as closely as possible to their original words, unless it's simply impossible to convey their meaning. Fixing Spelling errors? Please do. A spell checker would have fixed it, and I don't feel bad about doing an editor's job. Fixing grammar? I don't know if it's appropriate. The way editors get around missing words or hard to understand language is using brackets. So "How is babby formed? How girl get pregnant?" Is safely translated as "How is [a] baby formed? How [does a] girl get pregnant?". We know that the original speaker didn't say "a" or "does a", but we also accept that they intended to. Summary is the other method. You could simply say this: Kavya on Yahoo Answers (a 7 year old girl) is asking how women get pregnant. How can we answer her question in a tasteful manner, appropriate for the sensitivities of a year old child?
I can't believe I'm using this quote in a linguistics argument...
Anyways here it gos: Sometimes "translating" a quote renders it's meaning useless. Great internet example? http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/01/11/i-can-has-cheezburger/>LOLcats.
Reminds me of this letter -- probably the same person.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Score: 3, Insightful.
Code-style quoting is the best approach.