RockinRob

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Hi RockinRob. Welcome to English Wikiquote.

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Enjoy! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Quoting from quote books

Thanks for the welcome Jeffq. I'm looking to put together a Wikiquote page of quotes from a famous politician. Are there any article here that you think would serve as good examples? Thanks again. RockinRob 23:27, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I found a template. I have a book that has quotes cite from other sources. Do you know offhand how I would cite that? Something like "Quote" in "book" from "original source"? RockinRob 23:48, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Quote books are notorious for failing to cite specific sources of their own. (I was horribly dismayed to see that Laurence J. Peter, he of the infamous "Peter Principle", wrote a book, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time, containing hundreds of quotations without a single source, even for those he himself said. Still, such a book is at least a start. I usually do something like the following, which I recently added to Logic in a mood for extreme precision:

• He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.
  • Jesus; quoted in The Bible, Matthew 12:30 (KJV)

This separates the quotation (and possibly its date and original source) from the publication in which it is readily found. Another example, along the same thematic lines, would be:

• Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
  • George W. Bush, 2001-09-20; "Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People", White House press release, accessed 2006-05-23

This may seem cumbersome to some, but it's important to note both the date and situation a quote was made in and its reliable source, especially when the original is a speech which may be reported slightly differently by many parties. This is especially true for politicians, who never lack from media who wish to misquote them or cast their actual words in the best- or worst-possible light. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response Jeff, I should elaborate. I have a book of quotes from former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo called "The Sayings of Chairman Frank", put out by the Americans for Democratic Action. A typical entry might be something like this:

-I like art. It was us Italians who started most of it." Daily News 5-24-72

Basically the book lists quotes, and then sources a Philadelphia newspaper or magazine. If I used this book as a source would I say for example, -quote from "The Sayings of Chairman Frank" page 37, or would I say -quote from the Philadelphia Daily News, or would I say something else entirely?

I can verify the quotes in other references I have if needed, but if I could save a little bit of work while still being accurate, I'd like to do that. Thanks again. RockinRob 23:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

You remind me that we sorely need a Wikiquote:Sourcing quotes policy page to clarify these things. Right now, most of it is driven by largely unwritten practices, based partly on w:Wikipedia:Citing sources and other WP policies and partly on historical practice, bolstered by latter-day editors (like myself) who have been fighting to signficantly improve the state of sourcing here.

For now, I'd recommend that you include the supposed original source at a minimum. Anything else is third-hand at best. After all, we don't really know if author himself is also repeating something he read somewhere else, so the closest source to the original is always desirable. (Of course, we might expect Rizzo to know where his own quotes are printed, but the general principle is closest-is-best.) If the closest source is sufficiently specific, I don't usually bother with where I discovered it, as it's only being reported by the latter. In your example, however, the cited source fails to mention where in the rather considerable length of the Philadelphia Daily News of 24 May 1972 this quote appears. Usually, the minimum specific news source should include an article title. (By the way, always format dates so that they are unambiguous. American (and probably European) authors and publishers tend to ignore the fact that U.S. and European date practices frequently have the month and date mutually reversed. The two best ways to avoid confusion are (A) to spell out the month and (B) to use date links, e.g., May 24, 1972. Either will present the day unambiguously to all readers. See w:Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates containing a month and a day for how this works.)

Personally, I'm undecided about further information if the closest source isn't sufficiently specific. One the one hand, having a specific indirect source (Chairman, p. 37) provides at least one specific source. On the other hand, it doesn't add much to the verifiability of the quote, unless Chairman has a bibliography with more specific data. The goal in sourcing is to make it as easy as possible for our fellow readers and editors to be able to verify a quote, since the entire community forms the "editorial board" of Wikiquote. Sorry I can't be more specific myself. ☺

One last note: if you cite any work with page numbers, always remember to include the ISBN in the citation, or, if one doesn't exist, the publisher, edition, and year. (All of these are part of a proper citation, but if you're going to "cheat", as we often do, the ISBN makes it easy to look up the other info.) This data will give others a fighting chance to interpolate the location of a quote in a different edition with a different page count. (For that reason, the total number of pages is a good idea, too.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Question

Hay, Mind I I tell you a joke? Wazzawazzawaz 02:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)