Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Couldn't have said it better

In a column in Ideas back in May, cleverly headlined "Misspeak, Memory," Jan Freeman discussed the epidemic of misquoting. Not misquotes by reporters on deadline, but those that have echoed through the literary-journalistic ages. She cited Ralph Keyes's book "The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When," which demonstrates that "despite copious research," no one has been able to demonstrate that Margaret Meade ever said the unofficial motto of every activist organization: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world." (In my memory there's a nice second sentence: "Indeed, nothing else ever has." But now who knows?)

Now the Guardian draws attention to a new book from Elizabeth Knowles, the editor of "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations," with the slightly snotty title "They Never Said That."

Knowles says, "The last thing we want is to be seen as clever clogs, saying that these quotes are wrong. The fascination lies in how and why they were altered. Misquotations are much more interesting than mistakes." (Nevertheless, I find it very disappointing that Beam me up, Scotty" and "Let them eat cake" are fictitious.) Knowles makes a similar point to one Jan made -- that misquotes tend to represent a form of wishful thinking. We make the quote snappier and less clumsy than the original, or we credit it to a more fitting source.

Posted by Evan Hughes at 12:22 PM

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