“Well, you know. What it was was…. I had met just this guy,
this guy Fred, and, you know, I had just got back from Afghanistan – it was
hard because my wife…. I bumped into him in a bar – that Irish pub on Clement,
Ozzies? - and he said, not much, just said – I mean, he had been buying me drinks for
fuck’s sake, all that bullshit - just asked, how many babies did I - you know, all up in my face – did I kill? And I kind of lost it. And I kind of…. I had a gun, gun my daddy gave me, big
old thing, an old 45. So I…So I , I pulled it out and I kind of lost it and so
I shot, I shot, I shot him in the head there. And the blood, oh man the blood.
But it’s not like I, you know, meant to. I mean, I meant to. But not that, man.”
Here's an excellent discussion of this issue from the American Journalism Review.
Here's an excellent discussion of this issue from the American Journalism Review.
3 comments:
“I had met this guy Fred, and I had just got back from Afghanistan...I bumped into him in a bar...and he had been buying me drinks…[and] just asked, how many babies did I kill? And I kind of lost it. I had a gun my daddy gave me, big old thing, an old 45. So pulled it out and I kind of lost it, and I shot him in the head. And the blood, oh man, the blood. But it’s not like I meant to. I mean, I meant to. But not that, man.”
KC writes:
Really interesting assignment/discussion! I've always heard people say it's important to remember your commas when writing (in general, not necessarily when quoting), since they alone can change the whole sentence.
Have you heard this joke? People were asked to add punctuation to the following statement: "A woman without her man is nothing"
Men wrote: "A woman, without her man, is nothing."
Women wrote: "A woman: without her, man is nothing."
Ha. Writing humor, but thought you'd appreciate it. :)
MS writes:
Ah, yes – I remember this dilemma well from my days of reporting. It was probably especially acute for me, as I had the habit of recording just about every interview I did and transcribing it in full before writing the story. As I see it, there's two schools of thought: One is to leave the quote as is, which has the benefit of capturing the true flavor of the character's speech and might be OK to do in a more literary, longer-form piece. The second, which I usually opted for, was to clean it up, for the sake of the reader's legibility and respect toward the character. We're accustomed to hearing speech cleaned up when it shows up in a news story – to leave as is would stand out against the norms of the medium and could make the character look unintelligent or bizarre. Journalism is inherently an act of selective representation; cleaning up a quote is perfectly in line with that.
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