I need to quote something in an essay, and the excerpt fits better into the essay if I skip backwards at one point: “I have seen (group) hunted down” becoming So-and-so, who “hunted down” “(group)”. Should I have two quoted parts one right after the other, which looks weird, or can I use an ellipsis to join the two, even though the second fragment comes before the first?
Instead of quoting directly, just say
and put a reference to the source at the end of the sentence.
No.
An ellipsis is used to indicate where words were dropped from a quotation.
What you are doing is rearranging words in a sentence to make it say what you want, and trying to indicate that it is an actual quotation. It isn’t. Stop that!
From the example you gave, it seems to me that you are changing the meaning of the original sentence, distorting it to fit your point. Specifically, the original did not say that it was So-and-So who was doing the hunting down, but that is what your fake quotation says. In most academic papers, this would be grounds for a severe reprimand, or worse.
If you put it in quote marks, it should actually quote what the original author said. Nothing added, nothing rearranged, etc. You can drop words and replace them with an ellipsis. You can replace capital letters or words, indicated with [square brackets]. (But such changes must NOT distort the meaning of the original quote.) If you can’t make it work in the wording of your text, then DO NOT use it as a direct quotation. It’s quite acceptable to use it indirectly: As author-X indicates, So-and-So helped hunt down (group). That’s not as powerful as a direct quote, but that’s what you have. You do not get to rearrange what he said to make it fit your argument, and then mark it as if it were actually a quotation from him! And do be careful that this is actually what he said!
To clarify, it is clear in the original context that So-and-So was doing the hunting down. But point taken.
Quoting like Yoda … you are!
Okay, but what he was actually trying to ask was something like this. Say you have (for some reason) the sentence “Philosophy professors have been hunted down by myself and others.” Which of the following is permissible, if either, in a paper quoting this material?:
-
John, who has “hunted down” “philosophy professors”…,
-
John, who has “hunted down…philosophy professors”…
My own suggestion would have been the following: -
John, who by his own admission* has “hunted down” philosophy professors…
What do you think?
-FrL-
*This word may need to be a different one according to the context.
t-bon, I hear what you’re saying, but I do not think your “nothing rearranged” rule needs to be as iron-clad as you’re stating. Sure, it is not permissable to change the meaning of the overall quotations. But if the meaning remains intact, what is the problem?
Frankly, I can’t make heads or tails out of the OP’s example, so I will not use it. Let’s take this quote I just made up:
General Hardasnails: “I want a man who can shoot straight, stay awake for 48 hours in a row, hike 20 miles a day, and won’t give any backtalk. That’s the type of soldier who deserves to be captain.”
If I were writing a newspaper piece – or even an academic paper – I would have no qualms writing: According to General Hardasnails, the “type of soldier who deserves to be captain” is “a man who can shoot straight, stay awake for 48 hours in a row, hike 20 miles a day, and won’t give any backtalk.”
BTW, the sample quotation I created is typical when dealing with live interviews or transcriptions. People backpedal and mangle the linear flow of conversation all the time. If you can sort it out in your story by rearranging the parts, I see no harm.
I agree with **stuyguy ** completely, but there remains some confusion about the OP. I think I finally parsed it. To rephrase,
The original quote was by Jack Soandso, who said:
The OP would like for his essay to read,
The problem I see here is not in abutting two sections of quotes in a different order, but that the original quote does not say that Soandso ever did the hunting himself. He only saw the hunting.
Is it necessary to include the [members of a group] phrase in quotes? Is it a turn of phrase used only by Soandso? Also, is he talking about hunting in a literal or figurative sense? Perhaps an indirect quote would work better anyway. Let’s take a more concrete example that follows the OP.
If he is speaking literally, there is not a lot of value in a direct quote here (it might be appropriate for a journalistic article but not necessary for an essay). This could be rendered as
with no quote whatsoever. If for some reason the use of the phrase “hunted down” is special here, such as a metaphor for “finding” rather than literally hunting to kill them, you could write:
If for some reason, the description of the group is special, like “squirrels” is slang for a group of people who hide nuts, you use **stuyguy’s ** example and write
There’s no harm in that example, but there’s also no point. You’re rearranging the entire sentence just to put the word “is” in there. It disrupts the flow and makes things more difficult for the reader, and even if it’s a paper about General Hardsnails, you could say “Hardsnails once said that a captain should be [A] man who can shoot straight, stay awake for 38 hours in a row, hike 20 miles a day and won’t give any backtalk.” It’s better to paraphrase than break up a quote.
Cooking with Gas is right about the paraphrase causing a change in meaning. I find it’s easier to modify a sentence or two introducing the quote than to try to rearrange the quote. Or, like I said, paraphrase.
Why doesn’t the OP just exactly quote the relevant original paragraph (changing names if necessary) and we’ll have something to work with.
t-bon is right. Quotes are supposed to be verbatim and are never supposed to be rearranged. Whether you think the meaning is changed is beside the point. Quotation marks are not supposed to convey meaning, they’re supposed to convey the actual words of the person being quoted.
You’re either going to have to find an indirect way to reference the prior quote you want or put the quote somewhere else. One suggestion might be to put it in a footnote.
Your own example doesn’t make it clear where the quotation begins and ends.
I see no problem with the example you criticize. I don’t see any broken flow at all. The sentence is perfectly straightforward, and reads very naturally.
-FrL-
I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen deep-sea submersibles off the arms of the Marianas…
Marley23 and DtC, I still stand by my first post.
Perhaps if I made my example a little more stark you would see the value and necessity of my rearrangement. Let’s take this new, enchanced version of my example:
General Hardasnails: “I want a man who can shoot straight, stay awake for 48 hours in a row, hike 20 miles a day, and won’t give any backtalk. I knew plenty of guys like that back in W-W-Two, let me tell you. A different breed than the grunts today. That’s the type of soldier who can straighten out the limp-wristed screw-ups in Company C.”
You’ll notice that I added two largely irrelevant sentences between the first and last lines, and I made the last sentence more colorful – or, shall I say, quoteworthy.
Now, I contend that the following sentence is the best way to represent the general’s statement, even though it rearranges his words. The meaning remains intact, as well as the tone encapsulated in his colorful phraseology which would be lost in paraphrasing.
According to General Hardasnails, “the the type of soldier who can straighten out the limp-wristed screw-ups in Company C” is “a man who can shoot straight, stay awake for 48 hours in a row, hike 20 miles a day, and won’t give any backtalk.”
Why fool around with a confusing usage of quotes when you can paraphrase the introduction and use quotes for the critical statement:
General Hardasnails describes the type of soldier who deserves to be captain as “a man who can shoot straight, stay awake for 48 hours in a row, hike 20 miles a day, and won’t give any backtalk.”
Flight, please see my post immediately above yours, which probably arrived while you were composing your comments.
Yeah, I was going to use double quotes and single quotes, which was pointless AND I screwed it up.
I should write a correction to Gen. Hardasnails for calling him Hardsnails, but I like Hardsnails better.
The sentence is clearly written. But using partial quotes is discouraged because it leaves the reader wondering about what you’ve left out - same thing with ellipses - and in the example we were talking about it just wasn’t necessary to use a partial quote.
Yes, in that situation, it might be the best way. I didn’t say you should never ever rearrange a sentence; I said that it was unnecessary in the given example and not the best way to get the message across.
If we’re only concerned with what the general’s views on what kind of soldier should be captain, that’s an okay way to do it. “Quoteworthiness” is really determined by the subject; you’ve given us more of the general’s personality, and that would only be worthwhile in some types of stories.
I doubt that today’s journalist would quote the “limp-wristed” comment.
Ludovic, are you up on the roof again? Be careful. You’ll get hurt up there some day.
DROP AND GIVE HIM TWENTY!
Just to pollute the waters…
Journalistic ‘ethics’ are stricter than the law in this regard. Legally, it’s OK to “construct” quotes unless you show reckless disregard for the truth.
This was decided in Masson v. New Yorker Magazine (1991). Justice Kennedy wrote:
writers and reporters by necessity alter what people say, at the very least to eliminate grammatical and syntactical infelicities. If every alteration constituted the falsity required to prove actual malice, the practice of journalism, which the First Amendment standard is designed to protect, would require a radical change, one inconsistent with our precedents and First Amendment principles.