Pilgrim9
Active Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- SJPdP-SdC (2017)
SdC-Muxia-Fisterra-SdC (2017)
Lisboa-SdC (2018)
Ferrol-SdC (2018)
Ellipsis in quotations:
This post will only be of interest to those who believe that accuracy of quotations is important for effective communications and trust. If this subject does not interest you, read no further.
In many of the posts on this forum, we quote other posts and then we respond to the thoughts expressed in the quoted texts. We thereby advance the conversation. This is perfectly normal and is a good thing.
Sometimes we excise from our quotations, text that is superfluous to our line of reasoning. I think that excising superfluous texts is acceptable, but if and only if an ellipsis ("...") is inserted in place of each excision.
The ellipsis is important because it informs readers where excisions were made, and enables them to examine, if they choose to, the original text, to verify that the excised texts were indeed superfluous. It allows the reader to challenge the quoter's line of reasoning. Lines of reasoning that enable challenges and withstand them become more effective and convincing.
The ellipsis is a tool for building trust.
I do not think that it is acceptable for quotations to excise substantive text or to be inaccurate.
BTW this thread includes a comment wherein someone quoted someone else, excised a substantive clause, omitted the ellipsis, and then added commentary making a point that the excised text had already made. Not sure why this was done. The excised text was substantive and should not have been omitted from the quotation.
Moderator note: This post was moved from a another thread to create this new thread, and the last paragraph in this post refers to a comment in that other thread, which is here.
This post will only be of interest to those who believe that accuracy of quotations is important for effective communications and trust. If this subject does not interest you, read no further.
In many of the posts on this forum, we quote other posts and then we respond to the thoughts expressed in the quoted texts. We thereby advance the conversation. This is perfectly normal and is a good thing.
Sometimes we excise from our quotations, text that is superfluous to our line of reasoning. I think that excising superfluous texts is acceptable, but if and only if an ellipsis ("...") is inserted in place of each excision.
The ellipsis is important because it informs readers where excisions were made, and enables them to examine, if they choose to, the original text, to verify that the excised texts were indeed superfluous. It allows the reader to challenge the quoter's line of reasoning. Lines of reasoning that enable challenges and withstand them become more effective and convincing.
The ellipsis is a tool for building trust.
I do not think that it is acceptable for quotations to excise substantive text or to be inaccurate.
BTW this thread includes a comment wherein someone quoted someone else, excised a substantive clause, omitted the ellipsis, and then added commentary making a point that the excised text had already made. Not sure why this was done. The excised text was substantive and should not have been omitted from the quotation.
Moderator note: This post was moved from a another thread to create this new thread, and the last paragraph in this post refers to a comment in that other thread, which is here.
Last edited by a moderator: