The “that” in Starving Artist’s comment explicitly referred to this prior comment that was quoted by Starving Artist:
[QUOTE=Superdude]
Part of me wants to believe that. But he’s such an egotistical, self-aggrandizing narcissist that I can’t see him being altruistic, even for his family.
[/QUOTE]
In quoting Starving Artist, LHoD said in the square brackets that the “that” in the quote referred to:
“[Trump being an egotistical, self-aggrandizing narcissist]”
Perhaps the confusion is created by the fact that Superdude’s comment, to which “that” referred, was itself pejorative toward Trump. But the content of LHoD’s square brackets was a precisely correct, non-pejorative, non-editorialized statement of what the “that” in Starving Artists’s comment referred to.
Because his entire point is that with regards to being a “egotistical, self-aggrandizing narcissist” you can’t distinguish the persona from the person - if that’s your persona then that’s what you are. That point was made clearer by observing that SA’s claim was that “egotistical, self-aggrandizing narcissist” was a persona and not real.
There are other personas that could be just personas, and saying “[Trump’s public persona]” would fail to make the point, which was specific to “egotistical, self-aggrandizing narcissist”.
I think we’ve all quoted a post and commented on it without necessarily agreeing with it 100%. Given that there are many other ways to do what needs to be done, I’d say putting one poster’s words into another person’s post should be against the rules. He could have put [refer to post XXX] in there, for instance. Or, use the multi-post function as noted earlier. Without going back to check, the reader has no way of knowing where those words came from.
Yeah–that was definitely not my intention, and I don’t see how it can clearly be read that way. My intention was to make the conversation easier to follow, putting the antecedent of “that” in brackets for clarity. I tried to make it as close to the original as possible while maintaining grammatical structure. There was absolutely no attempt at editorializing, or at putting words in SA’s mouth.
My warning states:
I disagree. I know that altering things by using normal editorial rules is acceptable, and as near as I can tell, that’s what I did.
John, sure, I could have used multiquote. But that would have been a little clunkier to read, and in any case, the use of brackets to clarify the antecedent of a pronoun is commonly-accepted usage. What I’d like to come out of this is a clear statement by mods that this usage will not be dinged going forward.
I agree – LHOD used the exact text of the quote SA was responding to to clarify inside the square brackets.
I don’t see how LHOD could possibly have done any better of demonstrating the explicitly allowed use of square brackets both per the quoted rules and Ed’s clarification.
I’ll also add that the language Jonathan Chance used in his Warning leads me to suspect that he was unaware of the allowance within the rules for square-bracketed clarifications.
How can you be certain that SA would actually use those words himself? How am I, as a reader, supposed to know that SA did not use those exact words?
I agree that it was an honest mistake, and a mod note is more appropriate. But, going forward, I don’t think we need to muddy the waters and make what is supposed to be a hard a fast rule more of a loosey-goosey one. I can see that only leading to more confusion about what is OK and what is not OK.
I think you’re being silly – the square-bracketed clarifications are explicitly allowed in the rules, and using the exact text from the post that SA was responding to seems like the most obvious and clear way of using a square-bracket clarification.
Not really. They could have been from an earlier post of his. That is what I would have assumed. But if what you say is true, then they absolutely should NOT be there.
I think that if the “that” in Starving Artist’s comment had referred to a cute kitten, and LHoD had stated within square brackets that it referred to a cute kitten, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
The fact is, the “that” in Starving Artist’s comment referred to a pejorative statement about Trump that had earlier been made by Superdude. But it did so explicitly and unambiguously (Starving Artist quoted Superdude when making his comment), and LHoD accurately stated (verbatim except for changing tense) what “that” referred to, with no editorializing, and no attempt to assign any unstated beliefs or motivations to any party in the matter. There’s no difference in principle at all.
Second question first: you know that because that’s what brackets tell you.
First question, then: SA used a pronoun. Pronouns have antecedents. In this case, what do you think the antecedent to “that” was?
It’s very clearly the bit of the previous quote that he posted. He wasn’t agreeing with it; he was saying that it was a false perception caused by an act.
How would you know that he wasn’t agreeing with it? BECAUSE THE STUFF I QUOTED FROM HIM SAID SO!
Let’s be clear about something-- there are two issues at play here.
Should LHoD be given a warning for what he did. (I don’t think so.)
Should we make it OK, going forward, to insert one poster’s words into another person’s post as “a point of clarification”. (I think not, for the reason stated-- we don’t really know that the poster would have used those words himself, and there are easy, alternative ways of getting that clarification across.)
You seriously think that SA would have used different words to describe the point he was disagreeing with? The persona that he was saying was an act? Why on earth do you think he would have used different, less accurate words to describe the antecedent of his pronoun?
I’m getting the impression that maybe you haven’t actually seen the relevant prior comments because you don’t seem to understand what actually happened. Just to make sure that this is not a discussion at cross purposes, please read these posts carefully in that thread:
SA was responding to those exact words. That’s exactly how the square-bracketed clarification is described in the rule, and commonly used in print journalism.
Yup, exactly correct. And we definitely should NOT adopt the policy that if quote X refers to quote Y, and quote Y happens to be something controversial, we must bowdlerize quote Y rather than state it accurately!
I’m with LHoD - it made it easier to read that way and it kept the vein of the subtopic clear. It was obviously not intended to nor did it seem like the quoted material was being altered.