[d]oushite

February 22, 2008 in diary by mika | 3 comments

When I see:

“[We] believe that we are awesome…”

I’m ok. However, when I see:

“[C]onstitutional rights here are being…”

I get [v]ery worried about that single letter, especially when I find them in [d]ocuments that should have no [t]ypos.

3 comments

bignose on February 22, 2008 at 3:36 am

The “[C]” in that quote is not correcting a typographical error; it’s an editorial note showing that the person extracting the quote has substituted “C” for some other text. The most likely original text being “c”.

In other words, they’re saying “this *could* have started a sentence, and I’m using it that way in my quote; but in the original text, it’s actually in the middle of a sentence without the capital C at the start”.

Just like the “[We]” in your other quote is simply saying “I substituted this word because it’s the word that makes the grammar work when I extract this quote from the rest of the sentence, and doesn’t change the meaning at all”.
Christina on February 22, 2008 at 11:50 am

But what if they’re talking about something else entirely? Like Monstitutional rights? Monsters need rights too!
mika on February 22, 2008 at 1:23 pm

bignose — yeah, that’s why I was ok with things like [We] but not C. Now that I know that the c didn’t just appear out of nowhere, I’m more comfortable with c.

Christina — Totally. I’d like to claim my monstitutional claim too.