Revealing ellipses
The Chicago ‘rigorous’ method for handling ellipses in quotations (XV 11.57) is the only one that should be acceptable in scholarship.
Chicago’s ‘three-or-four-dot method’ permits an incomplete sentence to be presented as a complete one. Thus, as an example, Chicago says that this passage:
[A] The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless: it is not loving, it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. (Chicago XV, 11.57)
can be contracted as follows:
[B] The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless. . . . (Chicago XV, 11.57)
But the unspaced period after ‘aimless’ in [A] appears to signify the end of the sentence. The first ellipsis point masquerades as a true period, whereas in fact the sentence continues after a colon. What mischief could be wrought through this method with a phrase ending in a semicolon, after which the original author modifies or contradicts the initial statement?
The rigorous method would contract [A] as follows:
[C] The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless . . . . (Chicago XV, 11.64)
This is much better: the space before the first ellipsis point shows that an incomplete sentence has been quoted.
Such things matter. In the famous Finkelstein/Dershowitz affair regarding allegations of plagiarism in Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel, the ‘three-or-four-dot method’ would not allow one to spot the misquotation in Dershowitz’s:
We reached Tabor safely. . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route. (The Case for Israel, 23, link here)
Dershowitz is quoting Mark Twain. The Twain original is:
We reached Tabor safely, and considerably in advance of that old iron-clad swindle of a guard. We never saw a human being on the whole route . . . . (The Innocents Abroad, 520, link here)
Dershowitz can hide behind the ‘three-or-four-dot method’ in defense against the claim that he has misquoted. A rigorous quotation would be
We reached Tabor safely . . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route . . . .
So by appealing to a less rigorous method of treating ellipses, Dershowitz can block this example, at least, from telling in favour of Finkelstein’s accusation that he (Dershowitz) never actually consulted Twain.
Unfortunately for Dershowitz, there are many other examples of error in his quotation from Twain which unequivocally tell in favour of Finkelstein. Dershowitz is destined to be remembered only in copyediting manuals as a source of case studies of mistakes to avoid.
Leave a Reply