Since we were talking about old-timey principles of journalism, I thought we’d take a moment to remember that it used to be rude to quote someone verbatim. People talk bad. Even the most eloquent speaker salts his remarks with likes and ums, and a small-town mayor or GAO clerk cannot be expected to spit out paper-ready sentences on command. As a courtesy to their sources, reporters clean up quotes. Sometimes, though, a particular person will abuse this practice. Maybe this person has made no secret of her distaste for reporters, and maybe she mistreats the language in ways that a professional writer would find galling. That person is likely to wind up in print exactly as she speaks, for example like this:

Seeing as how Dick – excuse me, Vice President Cheney – never misfires, then evidently he’s quite convinced that what he had evidently read about me by the lamestream media, having been written, what I believe is a false narrative over the last four years, evidently Dick Cheney believed that stuff and that’s a shame.

That’s Sarah Palin defending herself, sort of, against Dick Cheney. Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link.

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