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QUIBBLING OVER QUOTES

When Joe DiMaggio was a young baseball player, a reporter asked him for a quote.

"I thought it was some kind of soft drink," DiMaggio said years later.

Requesting "a quotation" might have been clearer, but it would also have been absurdly hoity-toity. The story came to mind after we got an e-mail about both words a while ago:

I would question your use of "quote" when you mean "quotation." The first is a verb, the second a noun. Do you agree?

Actually, quote has been used both ways since at least the 1880s, half a century before DiMaggio first suited up for the Yankees. A better question would be is quotation the preferred noun?

Nowadays, many editors would say that the clipped version is fine much of the time. But in more formal contexts, especially when referring to old texts or famous dead people, they would probably rule that quotation is a better choice. (George W. Bush gives us quotes, according to this convention, but William Shakespeare and Sir John A. Macdonald supply us with quotations.)

All of this is pretty subjective, of course, and at the end of the day the label we apply to inverted commas is far less important than the words deposited between them.

Which brings us back to DiMaggio's innocence. What IS a quote?

QUOTA OF CLEANING

Quote comes from French and Latin terms for "marking with numbers" ? as in quotient and quota ? and originally referred to the practice of assigning figures to written passages being cited.

Today, it means the repetition of words. A quotation is not a rough approximation or a close paraphrase. The words should mirror what's been said or written before.

But given the way most of us talk, with countless ehs, uhs and ums, readers would find it hard work to get through a lot of transcribed speech if these sounds of hesitation were left in. They're, uh, known as disfluencies in linguistics, and it's, um, very common for editors to remove them, along with, st-st-stammers and fill-, er, false starts.

Scrubbing quotes clean can rub some people the wrong way, however, especially when you start changing words. It decreases accuracy and reduces your credibility.

Fixing grammar may appear harmless at first, but where do you draw the line? Is it OK to start recasting some people's sentences because we don't want them to appear uneducated or unclear? If so, is it fair to leave other people's words untouched solely because we think their colloquialisms and subject-verb disagreements ("We was robbed") are colourful and quaint?

Two months ago, the Washington Post introduced strict new rules against even slight changes to quotes. From now on, if the paper's journalists don't like somebody's grammar they have to remove the inverted commas and resort to paraphrases. All quotes must reflect exactly what people wrote or said, although the uhs and ums can still be chopped.

This is the same policy that's been in place at the New York Times for years, and when a slip is discovered everybody is told. In a recent correction, for instance, the Times acknowledged that a Mississippi football coach actually said "there ain't but one" instead of what the paper originally printed: "there is only one."

AN ASS

Fiddling with what's inside inverted commas can become absurd. Not long ago, one of our editors, Gary Katz, had a devil of a time trying to keep a Dickens quote correct. Someone with good intentions kept going into a page on CBC.ca and changing "The law is a ass" to "The law is an ass."

But Mr. Bumble said "a ass" not "an ass" in Oliver Twist. Writers should either accept this fact or drop the quotation marks hugging their asses, and get rid of any reference to the novel or the novelist.

When adding letters or words to quotes it's common to use square brackets [ ], which help distinguish our inserts from mere asides actually spoken or written by others. (Their tangents are put in parentheses.) So another option might have been "The law is a[n] ass," although this would have carried the condescending tone of a "sic" flag, implying we're smarter than Dickens.

LUNAR ECLIPSE

The indefinite article "a" and square brackets are no strangers. This summer will mark the 35th anniversary of what is undoubtedly the most famous case of a quote being altered by that one-letter word.

When Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969, everyone back on Earth heard the following crackle over their televisions and radios:

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

But since "man" in this context (without a "the" or an "a") means all human beings, his sentence really says: "That's one small step for everybody, and one giant leap for everybody."

It's certainly not what the Apollo 11 commander intended. More important, he later insisted it's not what he said. When Armstrong got back home and saw the mission transcript (as well as some newspaper and magazine coverage of his adventure), he told reporters that he had been misquoted.

NASA concluded the "a" got lost in atmospheric static, the official record was changed and many news organizations ran a correction, including the New York Times on page 20 of its July 31, 1969, edition. After pointing out that Armstrong had requested the revision, the paper embraced the extra word without qualification: "Inserting the omitted article makes a slight but significant change in the meaning of Mr. Armstrong's words, which should read: 'That's one small step for a man, one giant step for mankind.'"

Wait a minute. Small step, giant step? Is this right? Nope. It turns out that while publishing a five-paragraph correction outlining why an "a" was being added to a line that will be cited for generations, the Times turned "giant leap" into "giant step" by mistake. A slight stumble, to some. An astronomical bungle, to others.

Meanwhile, many people continue to say and write "man" not "a man" when quoting Armstrong, either because of habit or because that's what their ears hear when the tape is played. Several big-name reference books, such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, have settled for square brackets:

"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

ALL THAT GLISTERS ?

But let's not pick on the Times, one of the more scrupulous and scrutinized newspapers on the planet. Misquotes are all around us, and several collections have been published over the years.

Alexander Pope wrote "A little learning is a dangerous thing" (not "knowledge"), and Winston Churchill said "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" (not "blood, sweat and tears"). Shakespeare is a gold mine for those digging up such gaffes. In The Merchant of Venice, for example, he writes: "All that glisters is not gold" (not "glitters"). And in Act 4 of King John, the words are "to paint the lily" (not to "gild" the lily).

Samuel Coleridge. John Milton. Robert Burns. The list of people commonly misquoted is very long, but it's important not to add entries in haste. Alleged inaccuracies can turn out to be exactly what the person said, including a well-known comment about sex by Pierre Trudeau.

BEDROOMS OF THE NATION

Colombo's New Canadian Quotations claims that when the soon-to-be prime minister was still justice minister, he did not argue: "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation." Instead, we're told that "what he actually said was, 'The state has no place in the nation's bedrooms.'"

But checking the CBC's television archives, it turns out that Colombo's is wrong. Here's a verbatim transcript of a 48-second comment Trudeau made while answering reporters' questions about sweeping legislation he had just introduced in the House of Commons on Dec. 21, 1967:

"Well, it's certainly the most extensive revision of the Criminal Code since, uh, the, uh, new Criminal Code of nine- [sic], early 1950s. And in terms of the subject matter it deals with, I feel that it has, uh, knocked down a lot of totems and overridden a lot of taboos. And I feel that in that sense it, uh, it is 'new.' But I, it's bringing the laws of the land up to, uh, contemporary society, I think. Take this thing on, uh, on um, homosexuality. I think the, the view we take here is that, uh, there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation, and I think that, uh, you know, what's done in private between adults, uh, doesn't concern the Criminal Code. When it becomes public, this is a different matter."

It appears Trudeau also said "The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation" at some point, perhaps during a different interview, since that's what at least one paper published on its front page the next day. But this is not the same thing as claiming the other, accurate remark is a misquote.

It's worth noting that even highly articulate speakers appear less so when editors are unkind enough to include all the uhs, ums and false starts of natural, unscripted speech. It's also worth pointing out that Trudeau was merely paraphrasing a Dec. 12, 1967, editorial written by Martin O'Malley, a CBC.ca columnist who worked for the Globe and Mail back then.

PLAY IT [AGAIN], SAM

The number of incorrectly transcribed or ascribed comments in everyday journalism is probably larger than most reporters and editors imagine.

Since writers are fallible, some quotes will always be flawed. But many errors could be avoided if we were all a tad more careful. In the case of old gems, checking a reliable book of quotations is a good starting point. When possible, reading the original text (e.g., the relevant excerpt from a novel) is even better. And for material from the last 75 years or so, listening to a recording (e.g., an athlete's jab or a politician's quip) is ideal. A lot of audio and video is now available on the internet.

But if we do play the tape again we should avoid saying "play it again, Sam" - which, as every Casablanca buff knows is not in the film. Ingrid Bergman actually said "play it, Sam," proof that when a corrupted phrase is repeated often enough it can become better known than the original.

The song Sam finally agrees to play, of course, is As Time Goes By, which begins with the words: "You must remember this." It would seem that many of us don't.

PARTING SHOT

Some quotes are pure fiction. For example, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never had Sherlock Holmes utter "Elementary, my dear Watson" in any of his more than 50 stories, although he did say "elementary" alone once. You don't have to be a detective to figure out where the rest came from: TV and the movies.

Of course, we may occasionally prefer to quote films based on books because the dialogue is better known or more catchy than what was originally published.

In Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, for instance, Rhett Butler says: "My dear, I don't give a damn." When people peg the word "frankly" to the front of his words, they're correctly quoting Clark Gable's last line in the 1939 movie ? which is probably what they want to do in the first place.

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" has become a classic parting shot over the years, as direct and dramatic as any of Joltin' Joe DiMaggio's "Going, going, gone!" home runs.

The expression "parting shot," by the way, punctuates the point that words in English are sometimes changed without many of us even noticing. It's believed to be inspired by "Parthian shot," named after an ancient kingdom in what's now northeast Iran. Parthian horsemen were known for skillfully shooting arrows, even when riding away in real or pretended retreat.

But don't quote me on that. Instead, please cite the Oxford English Dictionary.

(April 23, 2004)

FRANKLY, MY DEAR ...

For those who do give a damn, here's some trivia:

Longtime Yankee announcer Mel Allen coined the phrase "Going, going, gone!" to describe baseballs sailing out of the park. He also gave DiMaggio the nickname "Joltin' Joe."

Burns said "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men (not "plans").

Coleridge said "Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink" (which is often quoted as "and not a drop to drink").

Milton said "Revenge at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils" (not merely "Revenge is sweet"). More than a century later, Byron said "Sweet is revenge."

Shakespeare said "Though this be madness, yet there is method in it" (not "There's method in his madness"). He also said "The better part of valour is discretion" (not "Discretion is the better part of valour").

In the original Star Trek TV series, Capt. James T. Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty." He did, however, say "Beam us up, Mr. Scott" in one of the roughly 80 episodes.

NASA's website features a lot on the Apollo 11 mission, including the "one small step for a man" version of Armstrong's first words on the moon. But it also includes a 106-page transcript of a 2001 interview with the former astronaut that leaves out the "a." Armstrong is asked if NASA or anyone else suggested he say "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." He replies no, and downplays the poetry of the line, calling it "a pretty simple statement." Armstrong also does not correct the interviewer's "misquote."

CBC.ca's Archives site features a treasure trove of Trudeau material, including an audio and video recording of the "bedrooms of the nation" remark from 1967.

Posted by thinkum at April 23, 2004 01:05 PM