Good comment from "Lileks" on the use of the "Quotes"
_____________________________________________________
I might have gotten my can hauled into the office for this:
"Boykin is also in a senior Pentagon policymaking position, and its a serious mistake to allow a man who believes in a Christian 'jihad' to hold such a job."
It’s a quote from an LA Times piece about this Pentagon official accused of speaking honestly; you can find the whole story at Hugh’s site. I’ll leave the particulars for others; I’m interested in the sleight-of-hand the columnist pulled here. The guy he’s quoting didn’t use the word “jihad.” The columnist put the word in quotes to signal that the guy didn’t use that word, you see.
Got it. Oh, I can imagine that conversation with the boss I'd have if I did this:
So you wrote that he believed in a Christian jihad.
(Coyly channeling Michael Palin in the dock as a professional Cardinal Richelieu impersonator) Ah did that thing.
But he didn’t say that.
Exactly? Well,he meant, it though.
He meant it.
Yes, and that’s why I put it in quotes.
Quotes. Which are usually reserved for, you know, quotes.
Right, but I used them here to set the word apart. You know, show that it was a paraphrase.
By using the means we use to indicate direct transcriptions.
Well, sometimes, sure. But I meant them more as, you know, those air quotes you do with your fingers?
So in the future should we have a picture of you with your fingers in the air to indicate that the quote is not, actually, a quote?
Look, the point is true. The guy wants a jihad; look at what he said -
Why look at what he said, when we can just ask you to describe the general aroma? You moron! There’s one standard in this business, and that these little curvy things, these dots with hooks, mean we are using the words of the person we’re talking about. WORDS.
I probably wouldn’t get fired. But I recall times in which I’ve screwed up a fact or figure, and it always took about three, four months before I didn’t approach copy desk with cap in hand. And that’s what makes me wonder about this situation: didn’t anyone on copy desk raise an eyebrow? Apparently not: either the writer had so much juice that no one dared question his Work, or he had sufficient reputation, and all his quotes were considered untouchable because he had a reputation for accuracy. Hell, if he puts it in quotes, it’s a quote. Copy boy!
But. My Strib editor, Bill, has an exquisitely tuned BS detector; he finds stuff that’s wrong in AP copy. The idea that a Pentagon official would call for “jihad” would set off a carillon in his head, and he’d ask, quite nicely: is that really what the guy said?
Copy desk is the last line of defense. In my last Newhouse column, for example, I said something about Amazonian lemurs; my editor informed me that copy desk had checked, and they don’t have lemurs. How about substituting another critter? I was stunned.
“Without copy desk,” I said, “life itself would be impossible.”
The moment a writer ceases to respect the desk is the moment he starts to screw his head into his own navel. Rule of the business: The worse the writing, the more untouchable the writer.
lileks.com |
