A couple of days ago I read a thread on here where some people were questioning the authenticity of something posted. Hey for a group of people who have been conned and lied to I get that we are a suspicious bunch
Then yesterday I tried reading something that started by posting a quote from a WT. But the person who started the thread added his or her (don't remember which) own commentary in the middle of the quote. There was so much personal commentary that I had no clue what was quote and what was personal commentary. Granted I have a really bad head cold right now and my head feels like a hammer is banging away in a bowl of cotton but it was just too much for me to try to sort out.
I know we all discovered that the WTS is very familiar with intellectual dishonesty in how it plays around with making quotes seem to say the exact opposite of what was originally meant but I just think we need to be better than that.
This it the purpose of those [square brackets]. I did not learn this until I went to college but those [ ] are a sign that when you quote someone else that anything you add that is not part of the exact quote you put your words inside the [ ]. That helps the reader know exactly what is being quoted and what is from you.
Now some people, and I am guilty of this too, is that we quote something and then put a couple of words in bold. If the bold was in the original or italics or underline or even color then it has to be copied exactly as it is in the original. You can sometimes get around this by saying the bold or italics or underline or color are yours. The problem here is that people copy and past so much that often the highlighted piece of the quote gets carried away without the disclaimer of what is a personal insertion.
The WTS could and should be sued for some of their creative quoting of other people's statements. Personally I have no desire to follow in their footsteps so I will try to remember that when I am injecting my thoughts into a quote I will be using [ ]