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."

Comments

Re:Stet it in print, but perhaps not on T.V.

[Martin Blank]

I think they should be left alone in all formats. When it's put against a background of generally proper grammar, it looks even worse. If there's a higher chance of someone's quote becoming popular, it may (may) get them to consider using a spell checker. Even if it's incremental, getting people to learn better grammar is good for everyone.

Re:[sic]

[gEvil (beta)]

I always thought the marker for material being quoted as it was spoken or written was [sic].

Minor nitpick, but typographically the square brackets are set roman while the word is set in italics. So it would appear as [sic] instead of [sic].

Square brackets

[hkmarks]

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.

Re:Even worse...

[moosesocks]

There is, in the form of the DOI, which is used for Journal articles and such, and is accordingly loved by librarians.

Unfortunately, as is the case with many of these librarian-developed databases, they didn't quite "get it" in terms of how the internet functions, and there is a fee to assign each new DOI. Accordingly, though it remains an indispensable tool for keeping track of journal articles, its use hasn't spread very far beyond that.