Andrew Gray wrote:
On 31/10/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I just found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Capote#In Cold Blood
Apparently some time ago, someone added a metric conversion (4 km^2) to the term "1,000 acres" in the quoted New York Times article.
That's a direct historical quote - is an in-line metric units conversion appropriate within the quote?
It seems to me like we shouldn't be doing that.
I confess I'm one of the real hardliners who says we shouldn't even wikilink in quotes! One of my real bugbears is people helpfully correcting unusual date formats without checking to see if they're in a direct quote, or in the title of a cited source, or something... really we shouldn't be altering or muddying the text of a quote any more than we have to.
I very much believe that quotes should be respected, but there are still places where judgement should be exercised. I have no problem with correcting obvious typos, as long as there is no question about it. This can also depend on the nature of the work. If a person is highly literary the obvious typo may not be a typo at all. US/UK spelling differences are not typos. Malapropisms are not typos. Typos that lead to a grammatical but off beat result, like a reference to an "immoral soul" when "immortal soul" is likely intended should not be altered.
In some cases though, particularly in factual writing, we don't need to make a writer look like an idiot when it serves no purpose. The following from an article called "The Post Offices of Bracken County, Kentucky" is one where I would make the corrections: "The Genmantown post office was established on the Mason Cbunty side of the line on December 8, 1817 with Ludwell Owings (?) as postmaster." The town should be "Germantown", as the rest of the context will establish; I also know that in reading some sans-serif typefaces in particular the distinction between the "rm" and "nm" combinations is not always clear. The totally meaningless "Cbunty" should also be changed. On the other hand the date format should not be altered, and the question mark expressing the author's uncertainty should be retained.
With the exception of rectifications to make something actually parse better - changing "all the underaforesaid shall" to "[they] shall" - I'd personally feel happier with using footnotes to annotate the quotation, if you feel the need to annotate it at all. And even that should be done sparingly unless it's truly confusing to the average reader... and, if at all possible, not a mindless numerical conversion.
I don't know about that one. A word like "underaforesaid" strikes me as psudo-legalese, and has a clear bearing on the credibility of the writer. Your "they" may not lead the reader to the same antecedent that the writer intended ... if that can be discerned at all. :-)
Ec