This question is born of practical necessity - one that I encountered while quoting a reference in "another" property's "comment field". Due to space limitations, I had wanted to "paraphrase" the following line..
This is why Git will only let you checkout another branch if everything is checked in – there are no uncommitted modified files.
with
This is why all changes must be committed before switching branches.
This did allow my post fit nicely - into the properly dignified amount of allowed characters - but left me with only two spaces to spare. With those two, I reluctantly surrounded my mini-edit in ( ) (parenthesis). This is fine, and all... but as the change was mid-quote, and mid-paragraph, there was no obvious way to clarify that this parenthetical portion was NOT as the credited author had intended - but was instead MY little handiwork.
A quick glance about found a dearth of good suggestions on how best to propery attribute - or even indicate - occurances of such paraphrasing, short of some kind of annotated bibliography, etc. What is the correct way to do this (syntactically, via a symbol, or with punctuation, etc.), especially in the context of modern / informal / electronic communications?
Answer
Standard scholarly usage is to enclose a paraphrase or addition occurring inside a passage identified as a quotation within square brackets: [ ]
You may make assurance doubly sure with your initials (or –ed. or –edd. to identify the interpolation as that of the editor or editors), thus:
"To be, or [an alternative –ag], that is the question."
By the same token, if you omit matter within a quotation you indicate this with ellipsis points: .... The newest version of the MLA Style Manual also requires you to enclose the ellipsis points within brackets, to distinguish your omission from the author's use of this mark:
"To be [...] is the question."
If youdunnit, bracket it.
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