Friday, October 2, 2009

Icky Quotation Attribution du Jour

Jones elaborated that interest rates are low.

Not on my watch. It now reads:

Jones added that interest rates are low.

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4 comments:

LL Blackwell said...

Five syllable attributions are pretty horrific. Isn't the idea to be less intrusive?

June Casagrande said...

Hmmm. Now I'm rethinkin' whether something not in quotation marks actually qualifies as a quotation. What ev. It's Friday night.

But re the larger question of whether it stinks: I agree that they should be less intrusive.

And the idiom I know is to "elaborate on" something. Not to elaborate something.

Besides, that definition of "elaborate" isn't really a transitive verb anyway.

All this fuss just because a feature writer wanted to use something fancier than "added."

LL Blackwell said...

I think the grammar book we use at school calls that an indirect quotation, so I have no problems with your terminology.

And yeah, if he really wanted to use "elaborate" it would require probably some re-working of the sentences around it.

Silly feature writers!

June Casagrande said...

Ah, thanks. That helps.

So often, I look at something I wrote in the past and think, "What the hell was I thinking" (calling that a quotation or telling people to hyphenate bee pollen or whatever the hell nonsense I'd been talking the hour, day, or week before). So thanks for sparing me the worry that I was talkin' drivel once again.

: )

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