Sandra Dodd

For that to have been paraphrased "are you sure she wants to learn?"
is a huge jump, but to use quotation marks on my words when my words
were (or could have been and should have been) right in front of the
writer is



Quotation marks are to indicate the exact words of another person.

========================================================================
=================
The above was by me, and has a hole in it.


I walked away to do something else and think of how to phrase what I
wanted to say, and then posted without remembering I had pulled the
end of that sentence.

I had started to say "criminal."

It's not "criminal" to go online and pretend to be someone you
aren't, or to tell big fat lies. That has been proven in court, in
the case in which a girl's mother (or a girl pretending to be her
mother or whatever) pretended to be a teenaged boy to lead on and
then crush a neighbor, who killed herself. No, the judge said there
wasn't a law that had been broken.

A reporter who misquotes can lose his job. A witness who misquotes
under oath can go to jail. In a forum like this, though, dishonesty
is not a crime.

To take money after misrepresenting oneself? That's not the same
level of "legal," though the morality matches.

I've been frustrated lately with a couple of (two or three)
unschooling writers/commenters/speakers (not specifically all three
nor great at those, and not on this list) who have misrepresented
themselves in small or large ways. It bohers me because I don't like
dishonesty a bit.

Go with ideas, more than with people. If something makes sense and
when you try it it's helpful, DO IT. If you can figure out a great
way to describe your discovery or experience so that others can have
better lives and if you're willing to do that, wonderful!

Anyone who's here just for excitement, I don't mind if you want to
lurk and hope for fireworks, but don't build or light any.
Anyone who's here to be stroked and soothed and told you're doing
wonderfully (regardless of what you write), it's not the list for
you. Search "support lists" and "gentle" at yahoogroups or google.
You'll find some of the people who came here and were sure they could
do better. (Most aren't doing better and some aren't doing at all
anymore.)

Misquoting a person, using quotation marks is VERY bad writing, bad
form, and in some situations potentially job-risking or illegal.
It's not helpful, and it's not moral. If you want to indicate that
you think the person said that, or that they said something like
that, then say so. If you delete this mail and don't know how to
get to the messages at yahoo, and you write "I think she said,
"People shouldn't be here to light fireworks" that might be close
enough, but as the message is still here and open, either quote me or
don't.

Sandra