01 8 / 2012

Quotations, context and attribution

downlo:

Many quotations you find on the internet can’t be trusted. In my experience, many seem to be attributed wrongly. I just came across one that was attributed to Virginia Woolf, but it turns out it was a line spoken by the character of Virginia Woolf in The Hours movie.

I also don’t like that people don’t specify where the quote comes from. If it’s by a writer, was the line something the writer themselves said? Or a line in one of their plays/novels/poems/screenplays/etc.? Tumblr in particular is fucking terrible when it comes to attribution. It is very frustrating to read a quote without context or see a picture of a piece of art, fashion, architecture, etc. with no explanatory caption or even a linkback to wherever you found it. Not only is it stealing content (in many cases), it’s annoying for the reader/viewer as well.

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Permalink 6 notes

  1. bouffantofbaul reblogged this from msavignon
  2. msavignon reblogged this from affably and added:
    Co-signed, Bob Dylan
  3. affably reblogged this from downlo
  4. labratinhiding reblogged this from downlo and added:
    I agree so much with this. The biggest issue for me is the lack of context. I’ve seen a lot of quotes taken out of...
  5. affably said: My favorite is when I Google a quote and it comes back to Tumblr!
  6. bookling-stormborn said: I especially hate when the quote is something a character in a book says, and then it’s attributed to the author. NOPE, NOT THE SAME THING.
  7. downlo posted this