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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."
Traduttori traditori; "translators are traitors".
Yes indeed, and [sic] exists because it is extremely poor form to edit a quote.
I'm more familiar with what journalism demands, but you're really not wanting to edit what a person says, even if it makes them look better than what they originally said. Any edits to somebody else's words opens up liability both for lawsuits as well as ethics complaints.
A well written article uses quotes as a means of showing the reader what happened, if one were to edit the quotes beyond cutting unnecessary bits to fit the article, there's a real risk of changing the quote. Even cutting it down brings in risks if it's not done in a careful manner.
Really, editing quotes is just a bad idea if the quote is so bad that you really have to edit it, then the appropriate thing to do in most cases is to just look for another one.
I'm definitely not the foremost expert on this, but it is something to undertake only with great trepidation.
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.
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."
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
That's a rule I've never understood. I try to force myself to put the punctuation inside, but it's just anathema to me as a coder.
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "This is a test;"
It's just wrong.
Yes I know that one, though I often get it wrong (as in my previous post). More out of laziness than anything else though.
And that's why the common sense way is better. It's quite obvious that you should have written
"Its = possessive. It's = 'it is'".
My rule is quote what is being quoted, and nothing else. If there was punctuation in the quote, then put it in. If there wasn't then don't. Then after the quote is finished, put in whatever punctiation you would on a normal sentence. Which leads to things like
Harry asked "What are you doing?".
I know it's wrong pretty much anywhere you go, but it makes the most sense, and if anyone doesn't like it - well I'll get over it if they don't. Plus I never write in a situation that is formal enough for people to be rightfully pissed off about it anyway.