Quoting people accurately is really hard — and you can quote me on that.
Posted in Recorded Quotes on Apr 13th, 2012
Musician Nthato Mokgata (who also goes by Spoek Mathambo) clearly laid out the often-unspoken unease that exists between interviewer and interviewee.The exchange between the singer and journalist Andrea Nagel is captured in the beginning of an article that appeared in the 13 April 2012 edition of The Times of South Africa. Mathambo asked that the [...]
Posted in Already Published Quotes, Historic Quote, Translated Quotes on Apr 12th, 2012
Misquotations pop up in the strangest places. Today, I was at a stationery store (it was stationary, too, by the way) looking at anniversary cards. (Don’t tell my wife; I’d like to surprise her.) There, I found two which each referred to the same Hermann Hesse quotation. However, the quotes did NOT MATCH. The one [...]
Posted in Translated Quotes on Apr 11th, 2012
The April 12, 2012, edition of Hong Kong’s South China Post, I think, misrepresents what Ozzie Guillen said in the Tuesday press conference in Miami. In a promo on the main Sports page, the paper says that Guillen said the problem was a “misquote” (see above). But I’m pretty sure he didn’t use that word. [...]
Posted in Translated Quotes on Apr 11th, 2012
Ozzie Guillen, baseball manager of the Florida Marlins, has finally said something that has generated massive blowback. He was suspended for five games and apologized in a long press conference on Tuesday (10 April), as summarized by Yahoo! At issue was something Guillen said. The Yahoo! article quoted Guillen’s most relevant comment from the Time [...]
Posted in Historic Quote on Apr 10th, 2012
An editorial in The Guardian out of Great Britain today (10 April 2012) again brings 19th century German leader Otto von Bismarck into the mix regarding a widely used statement that links (ha, ha) sausages and laws. The editorial opens this way: “Bismarck never likened law-making to sausage manufacture, but the misquote is remembered because [...]
Posted in Already Published Quotes, Historic Quote on Apr 6th, 2012
Nearly two years ago, Neil Boyd, professor and associate director of the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, concluded that Canadians had apparently hit the canvas and were down for the count because of their growing attraction to blood-filled Ultimate Fighting Competition. To make his case, in an opinion piece in the Vancouver Sunon [...]
Posted in Already Published Quotes on Apr 5th, 2012
Sometimes we know a little too much for our own good when it comes to reporting some quoted material, even if it’s from, say, the line of a play. This happened in the New York Times in an article published on March 25. The article, a review of Travesties by Tom Stoppard, which was playing [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Apr 4th, 2012
There’s a correction in the Philadelphia Inquirer of 4 April 2012: A story in some editions Tuesday misquoted Rutgers professor David Redlawsk, who said: “Those working toward the merger have apparently not made their case to New Jerseyans over the past six weeks.” I appreciate any public correction, kind of. Unlike the New York Times, [...]
Posted in Recorded Quotes on Apr 4th, 2012
Thanks to Erik Wemple (“NBC issues apology on Zimmerman tape screw-up”; 04/03/2012) and others for staying on top of NBC’s mishandling of the recording of the police dispatcher’s discussion with George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watch leader, who admitted shooting and killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in February but claimed it was in [...]