Today, we looked at some ways to manipulate textual evidence "legally" -- and some of the ethical ramifications of doing so.
To begin with, you filled out a sheet illustrating the various techniques for altering evidence -- specifically, ellipses (...) and [brackets]. The sheet also set forth the purpose of quotation marks with textual evidence (to assure the reader that the words within the quotations are "verbatim" -- exactly (word-for-word) what the speaker/writer said/wrote). See a copy here:
Quotations, Ellipses, and Brackets
In the process filling out this sheet, we also touched on three ethical issues: altering quotations to "clean up" a speaker's use of the English language, using quotations when no actual recording of the original speech exists (making the quote non-verifiable), and inventing quotations. We read two specific articles that dealt with these issues:
Ethics of "Cleaning Up" Quotes
Sony's Fake Critic
We finished class by emphasizing the two most important rules of quotation tailoring: (1) Always let your readers know when you’ve altered a quotation in any way; (2) Always make sure that the way(s) you’ve altered a quote don’t change the author’s original, intended meaning.
No homework was assigned, save the ongoing Animal Farm project; your first in-class workday for this takes place tomorrow.