User talk:Davecrosby uk/Archives/2008/July

Less of a lot, please
You changed "alot" to "a lot" in an article I am watching ("Thank You Girl"). The problem is, "alot" was used in a quote copied directly from a source. That misspelling/typo/whatever should not be corrected; we copy it as we found it. If you used an automated tool to find that error, you'll have to be careful to avoid such situation. I have reverted your edits to the article in question. &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 02:53, 22 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This raises an interesting question: if the quote is something that Paul McCartney said, how can the source know whether it was "alot" or "a lot", unless McCartney said to them "make sure you spell that right!"? I have reverted to "alot" (yet again) and added a [sic] but I doubt the misspelling will last long this time around either.  Scolaire (talk) 14:37, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think the question is relevant for this reason: we only cite what we saw. We did not hear McCartney, we read a quote from an article. The misspelling may be on the part of the author, but that article is the source. For a quote, we must accurately transcribe the source, and if it includes misspellings, we transcribe those, too. Correcting sources is a slippery slope; you make a little change because you think the original transcriber made a mistake, or perhaps the interviewee was a little tired and made a mistake, and before you know it, you've interpreted the evidence and that's not good. The evidence should be presented as accurately as possible, and the interpretation should be left to the reader. &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 17:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)