The usage the author points out is odd, and one I would never use.
However, it is not brackets alone that is an issue.
The usage is strange!
Begin excerpt:
They may groan when Corky, denied the massive funding he’s asked for, tells the town council he’s going to “go home and bite [his] pillow,” the way I do now.
End excerpt.
The quote with brackets in it appears functionally equivalent to:
"go home and bite my [his] pillow."
I agree with the author here, and would add calling out the brackets alone is not enough.
There are well accepted and clear uses of brackets in quotes that are lumped in with this arguably, dubious construct.
I read the article title and thought, "Well, no. Is this some purist argument or other?"
Turns out it is not!
Standard bracket use is not in question. Not even mentioned. Normal bracket use does not change a quote at all, when done properly.
The bracket use the author is bringing to our attention DOES.
Go ahead, take a closer look at the full excerpt. Why did they do that?
About the only reason I can find for doing it appears to be a potential misunderstanding between "my pillow", as would be quoted, and the ending statement, "The way I do now."
Why?
The quotes clearly assign "my pillow" to Corky, as opposed to the writer, who post quote says, "I do now", but that is not good enough, apparently.
I would call this being too clear at others expense, as well as an insult to the reader, who is likely to wonder just why "[his]" got put in there.
Did Corky really tell the town council, "go home and bite pillow" broken English style? Of course not, so why bother with the use of a context or clarification device used to muddy both? Edit: Even worse is the case where Corky actually did speak broken English style, which is now rendered a matter of ambiguity because someone thought muddying up the language would help their prose be more clear!
Agree with author on this one.
That bracket abuse, and I am going to call it as I see it here, appears to be quite pretentious, while also adding nothing of value and considerable confusion!
The syntax given in the article is standard - a square-bracketed part replaces words in the original text that would otherwise appear there. Your proposed alternative is not standard.
(At least one example given in the article is incorrect usage, but the basic principle is normal and widely used.)
Is that the standard syntax? I've always been led to believe square brackets are used to insert words that don't exist in the quote.
> "go home and bite my [his] pillow."
To me makes way more sense. If I was to read "go home and bite [his] pillow." I would assume the person being quoted had said ""go home and bite pillow." which makes almost no sense.
Yes, it is standard. Search the thread for MLA or manual. Academic papers are done this way and have been for a long time, and it's not hard to understand.
I've not seen a paper with it yet, and doing it introduces an ambiguity into an otherwise clean, parsable syntax. And frankly, doing that is completely unnecessary. Adds pretty much zero value, and is presumptuous.
I am quite sure you can show me one too, and the point being this isn't in broad use just yet. Should not be.
Frankly, this reminds me of the one space after sentence mess. Similar reasons have been given. It reads better! It flows better! You get the idea here.
But, ever notice how often your mobile device gets capitalization wrong?
This is why!
The same people who thought cleaning up that one space made sense did not think through the parsing implications. One space means we no longer have a way to differentiate an end to a sentence from an abbreviation.
That nice, clean space has already cost untold human hours spent on hobbled user input. Your phone literally has no way to capitalize in a more effective, assistive way. (same goes for any code assistant depending on that information, which is lost in the one space after sentence scenario.)
Here we have a similar thing. If the brackets are allowed to overwrite quoted material, then we lose the ability to differentiate some of how brackets are used, which means we've made our language and grammar more ambiguous, and for what?
The example given in the article highlights this perfectly!
Given the use: go home and bite [his] pillow
Did Corky say, "go home and bite pillow" , or was something else said, and if something else was said, what was it, and why was it not simply quoted?
MLA is a standard, not the only standard. Just becase a significant portion of universities/academic instituitions have adopted it as their standard doesn't make it the worldwide standard at all. It doesn't even make it the standard for all academia.
Further Esquire is not an acadmic journal so should probably conform to a more widerly used understanding of how quotes are recorded/put in context.
If we adhere to the syntax, the reader will be led to believe the person quoted said something they did not, and further, said it in a way that required clarity in brackets.
Neither are true.
Accepting this use muddies and accepted and precise syntax.
However, it is not brackets alone that is an issue.
The usage is strange!
Begin excerpt:
They may groan when Corky, denied the massive funding he’s asked for, tells the town council he’s going to “go home and bite [his] pillow,” the way I do now.
End excerpt.
The quote with brackets in it appears functionally equivalent to:
"go home and bite my [his] pillow."
I agree with the author here, and would add calling out the brackets alone is not enough.
There are well accepted and clear uses of brackets in quotes that are lumped in with this arguably, dubious construct.
I read the article title and thought, "Well, no. Is this some purist argument or other?"
Turns out it is not!
Standard bracket use is not in question. Not even mentioned. Normal bracket use does not change a quote at all, when done properly.
The bracket use the author is bringing to our attention DOES.
Go ahead, take a closer look at the full excerpt. Why did they do that?
About the only reason I can find for doing it appears to be a potential misunderstanding between "my pillow", as would be quoted, and the ending statement, "The way I do now."
Why?
The quotes clearly assign "my pillow" to Corky, as opposed to the writer, who post quote says, "I do now", but that is not good enough, apparently.
I would call this being too clear at others expense, as well as an insult to the reader, who is likely to wonder just why "[his]" got put in there.
Did Corky really tell the town council, "go home and bite pillow" broken English style? Of course not, so why bother with the use of a context or clarification device used to muddy both? Edit: Even worse is the case where Corky actually did speak broken English style, which is now rendered a matter of ambiguity because someone thought muddying up the language would help their prose be more clear!
Agree with author on this one.
That bracket abuse, and I am going to call it as I see it here, appears to be quite pretentious, while also adding nothing of value and considerable confusion!