For more than two years now I have been editing a frustrating diatribe destined to one day become a book (please do not ask why I agreed to do it because it is a long story) that is perhaps now at its most frustrating point as I work to confirm and then incorporate all of the missing sources referred to in the text.
It's not that I didn't tell the client two years ago when we started that he needed to cite his sources. I told him, but he said he had them, and we put it off. (As for me, somewhere in the back of my mind I never believed that the book project would come to fruition--so really, what did it matter? Well, it turns out I was wrong.) And, after my speech about "It's not a real book unless it has a bibliography," he enlisted me and a recent college graduate of his acquaintance to research all of his wild claims and attribute them to one source or another. Egad.
Thankfully, it was the college graduate and not yours truly who was assigned to do much of the research, but now as I attempt to incorporate the sources she found (and the many corrections of erroneous facts), I am repeatedly frustrated to the point that I can only work in 25 to 45 minute chunks before my blood is boiling and I have to divert my attention to something else to calm myself down before starting back in on it.
Suprisingly, this new frustration has less to do with the fact that the book is so chock-full of errors, or that the entire thing is supported by inane, inconsistent logic, or the sexist cliché after sexist cliché. The fact is that these frustrations are old hat; I've grown accustomed to them. (To be honest, they've actually managed to evolve into humorous anecdotes that I enjoy sharing with my friends.)
No, today my frustrations are less due to the client and more to the gargantuan proliferation of presumably misattributed quotes and information on the internet--of which I have only now become so painfully aware. (Go ahead and laugh.)
I can see how it happens: A quote is attributed (without confirmation or reference) to Mark Twain (for example) by one source, from which point it is quickly propagated all over the internet, so that before long hundreds of sources state that the quote is by Mark Twain--when really "Anonymous" is the better designation because there is no actual source to back it up.
Take the following quote, which is commonly attributed to Confucius but is actually anonymous (according to WikiQuote, which yes, can be edited by anyone and should therefore also be taken with a grain of salt): "Choose a job that you love and you will not have to work a day in your life." After several hours of grueling internet research I still have yet to find a reference that demonstrates where, specifically, Confucius set that bit of wisdom down in print--which is why, I imagine, WikiQuote maintains that the author is anonymous.
And yet, here is a short excerpt of a very long list of websites that attribute the quote to Confucius:
- thinkexist.com
- brainyquote.com
- quotationsbook.com
- famous-proverbs.com
- University of Texas at Austin Career Exploration Center
- Creighton University Career Center
- daytraderjobs.com
Yikes.
(By the way, if anyone does find a valid reference for the actual source of this quote, please be so kind as to share. You can prove both me and WikiQuote wrong!)
In the meatime, this what I've been doing with my time--trying to track down all of the impossible quotes that are littered throughout 200 impossible pages.
On the bright side, at least some of the misattributions (on the internet and in the book) are obvious for what they are, such as this gem that was attributed to Confucius but is in fact a Confucius joke: "Man who goes to sleep with itchy butt wakes up with smelly fingers."
On that note, I will end my entry with some sage advice (and feel free to quote me directly on it): Be careful of what you read on the internet because it's not always true. (If you do decide to use my quote, however, please make sure to use the copy/paste function so you don't get it wrong and I end up being misquoted too. Thanks.)
(Note to friends planning to comment: let's please leave names out of this, okay?)
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