Quotes are sacred

Roy Blount covered this issue succinctly in Three Bricks Shy of a Load, quoting Dwight White on an interception:

"I did my hands like this, and the muffucker stuck."

 

Bringing up Roy Blount Jr. reminded me of this piece, so I dug it out and republished it. Sorry for the minor threadjack, but with all the things going on in the business, something to enjoy. And yes, it talks about quotes:

http://sportswritingediting.blogspot.com/2008/12/on-lighter-side.html

 

You know, SF, you just really seem to get it. You're one of those guys I wish I'd have worked with at some point.

 

Every quote is sacred

Every quote is great

If a quote is wasted

Jolly gets quite irate

 

Thanks, man...just happen to love the business.

 

This thread reminds of a quote from a pro boxer in the late 70s or early 80s who was asked about the possibility of a knockout in an upcoming bout:

"If there bees any knocking out done, I bees the one that do it."

Wish I could remember who the dude was. Maybe it was Clubber Lang.

 

Here's a perfect example from today's Boston Herald, illustrating why we should never put our words inside someone else's quote.

Joe Fitzgerald writes about Jim Rice:

---

To be sure, he wasn’t a barrel of laughs during the 16 seasons he played for the Sox, and he certainly didn’t endear himself to most writers, with whom he shared what could be termed an icy relationship, but baseball’s Hall of Fame is not about congeniality.

“I don’t want those (writers) loving me,” he once explained. “I don’t even want my teammates loving me. I just want them to respect me.”

http://tinyurl.com/7hjxqb

---

So, what did Jim Rice say?

A. "I don't want those guys loving me."

B. "I don't want those assholes loving me."

C. Who knows.

What in the world is the point of quoting someone if you're not going to tell the readers what he said?

Why don't editors keep this kind of (nonsense) out of print?

 

I disagree with your premise that this illustrates why we should "never" do this. If there is a way around it, I'd agree that parentheses are best avoided.

But "never" is a big word.

Also, I'd point out that we are not in the stenography business.

 

Are you implying that he wasn't referring to the writers? If not, I don't see the point. I think it's part of our job to interpret the meaning of the quotes and help the readers understand them. Like I said before, you'd better be sure he's referring to the writers, but if he is I have no problem with this. You saying that the average reader might look at that and say "I bet he called them assholes!"? Sure, if you can write around it, do it, but this quote is not a problem in my mind.

 

But the point at which you go out of your way to say he's not about congeniality...then edit out the only non-congenial (assumed) word in the quote...it defeats the entire setup.

 

Hmmm. I didn't really look at it that way. Just saw it as a statement and a quote that shows he doesn't care what other people think. There probably a better way to do it. If he indeed said assholes, there's probably a way to make it more obvious/powerful (depending on your shop's style/guidelines).

 

(expletive) to start with.

But still...if you don't want to have an expletive in your paper, then putting [expletive] in a quote defeats the purpose because everyone reading it will say "assholes" in its place, or "sunsabitches" or whatever else they deem. Doesn't lessen the likelihood of someone thinking it if it's not there.

Use it, or don't.