A Mini-Rant on Respecting Other Authors’ Words

No platform can teach its users good grammar, appropriate quoting and crediting practices. There are some loosey-goosey users that need to learn a better way to share information. Here goes:

Okay, don’t be insulted if you’re guilty any of my pet peeves. All of us goof. We can do better justice to the writers we are sharing and quoting.

Much of it depends on why you’re sharing and how you do so:

• Are you quoting the writer or seeking to add to your followers by linking yourself to the writer’s stack?

• Do you understand that quotes used from another writer’s stack should appear in quotation marks?

• If you are extracting one quote properly, don’t you think the Substack original author would appreciate a link to the entire article to see if you interpreted the quote properly?

Context is important. You’re familiar with fundamentalists using Bible quotes out of context and certainly politicians focusing on a misleading sentence from a long article? Good readers and writers want links to the original article out of respect for the original author.

Imagine the original author looking over your shoulder before to hit “post.” Imagine all of that author’s fans, subscribers, followers looking over your shoulder to see if you’re being 100% transparent in your quote or comment.

I’ve observed that too many Stackers want to make posts like Facebook with no rules. Substack is not Facebook because the standard of published writers writing for other writers is much higher. We must treasure the words of others as you want your words to be treasured (and credited) one day.

That’s the end of my wee little rant. I am very attached to some of my favorite writers, and I had to vent. Before you share a quote or long commentary on another writer’s work, remember who will be looking over your shoulder!

Thank you, dear Subscribers, for being the best community of readers & writers! Diane

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