[Air-l] quoting Internet sources: reproducing errors and typos?

[Paul-Brian McInerney]

This is a problem ethnographers face as well: whether to edit quotations
from different sources.  For ethnographers, there is data in the way people
talk (e.g., contractions, slang, good and bad grammar).  However, to some
readers, they can be irritating or possibly convey that the writer has poor
editing/writing skills. I took a class with Mitch Duneier last year and this
topic came up.  There was little consensus and no rules of thumb on how to
handle it though.  For my dissertation, I make the judgment call depending
on how germane I think the instance is for my argument.  If it does not
contribute directly, I carefully edit the words to maintain the letter and
spirit of what the person was saying. If I think it does contribute
directly, I leave it as is.  That way, the reader pays attention to what I
want them to.  Too much editing loses the fidelity of the quote, too little
distracts the reader from what you (the researcher) are trying to say.   I
think what is important is to stay true to the theory that you are trying to
create or support. 

-Paul-Brian


On 7/31/04 4:37 PM, "Alexandra Samuel" <alex at alexandrasamuel.com> wrote:

> Now that I am arriving at the final edit stage of my dissertation on
> hacktivism, I find myself struggling with an aesthetic and scholarly
> dilemma. Since so much of my interview material comes from e-mail and IRC
> exchanges, and much of my additional material comes from site defacements,
> bulletin boards, etc, the direct quotations in my dissertation are just
> jammed with typographical, spelling, and grammatical errors.
> 
> I feel that it would be irritating and condescending to insert a "sic" after
> every error. But in correcting them I lose some relevant information (like a
> sense of whether the respondent is a native English speaker) and compromise
> the accuracy of the quotation. My current compromise is to leave all the
> errors intact, but to acknowledge the problem in an early footnote. But this
> seems a bit problematic, too, since all the errors are a bit distracting,
> and maybe do a disservice to my research subjects. After all, who among us
> would want our IRC typos preserved for eternity?
> 
> I'd love to know how others have handled this. I haven't been able to find
> any standard for how this should be handled in Internet research.
> 
> Thanks,
> 

10101010101010101010101010101010101010010101010101010
Paul-Brian McInerney
Sociology PhD Candidate
Columbia University
pm263 at columbia.edu
http://www.columbia.edu/~pm263
H. 718.626.4379
M. 646.321.6036
An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
-Paul Valery
1010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010