Editing
Give names and specialist terms their own check
A spelling check may accept the wrong name without complaint. Give people, places and technical vocabulary a pass based on sources and consistent usage.
Return to the source you are quoting
Begin with the exact edition, recording or document used for the quotation. A later edition may revise a sentence; a transcript may differ from the audio. Record enough information to find the passage again, including page, section or time reference where available.
Read or listen beyond the quoted fragment. What question was being answered? Does the next sentence qualify the claim? A short quotation can be accurate character by character while suggesting the opposite of the speaker’s point. Write a private note explaining what the source supports before deciding how much of it to include.
Compare the manuscript with the source in small units. Check names, numbers, negatives and punctuation especially carefully. A missing “not” is more serious than several visible typographical errors. For an audio source, listen again to uncertain words rather than turning a plausible guess into a confident transcript.
Make your intervention visible
If words have been omitted, check that the omission does not change the meaning or disguise a jump between unrelated passages. If you insert an explanation, distinguish it from the original words using the convention required by the project. Apply the chosen quotation style consistently, while preserving meaningful features of the source.
Do not silently improve somebody’s argument while presenting it as their wording. If the original is too tangled for the job, a clearly attributed paraphrase may serve the reader better. That paraphrase still needs to represent the source accurately; it is not permission to supply a cleaner claim than the evidence supports.
A quotation reproduced by another writer is a lead, not always the final source. Try to locate the original. If you cannot, make the source chain clear rather than citing a document you have not consulted. This matters when familiar quotations have accumulated small changes through repetition.
Check the quotation after revision
During editing, a quotation may move away from its attribution, lose its opening context or acquire a new introductory claim. Read the whole paragraph after the wording is settled. Make sure readers can tell who is speaking, which words are quoted and what conclusion you are drawing from them.
Keep verification and permission questions separate. Establishing accurate wording does not by itself establish that every proposed use is authorised. Where a quotation raises rights or permission questions, flag it for the relevant decision rather than treating a citation as clearance.
Save the checked reference with the final text. A note that says “checked” is less useful than one identifying the version and location. If another editor later shortens the quotation, they should be able to revisit the same evidence without reconstructing your research.
