	Renditions

Cool Rendition Markers

It is possible to loosen up and enlarge on the "rendition business", or at any rate make use of some "stenographed" markers to make it simple. Here are some ideas.

There are newly developed markers to denote kinds of technical abbreviations or renditions - codes that are easy to use, easy to remember, and perhaps easy to forget too. Such rendition markers are typically put in square brackets on this site - []. In the table you can see who they are and for what purposes they are used.

Rendition markers are shorthand ways of telling what sort of statements we are confronted in addition to verbatim quotes. Markers of various sorts tell quite accurately what kinds of modification of original expressions we are dealing with.

An extended range of rendition markers can make citations and worked-on quotations fun and readable also. They do not have to break any rules of citation and rendition either. They function as rather specified ways of referring to expressions and ideas of others. Accurate referral is a good "gambit".

These are fun to use:

Markers	Meaning	Fit for, employed
With + or \|	Selected keynotes assembled	Showing some debt, perhaps. "With" is handy in forming gist plainly and elegantly, fairly and squarely. It is fit for and used with shuffled gist too. It typifies an advance to get at some solidified and hopefully constructive meaning. When you twist and turn statements and phrases of others, and end up with something of your own because none has said it exactly like that to your knowing, you either cliam it as your own or - to ensure wide embarrassment or exasperation - write "with" to denote some alleged debt of thinking.
Mod ¤	Modified	Where tough reservations or other articulations are preferrable, or stern carefulness seems best needed. May also be used to denote a mishmash "quote", i.e., a concoction of isolated segments put together.
Abr \	Ahem	"The more I abbreviate, the more cryptical I may seem - maybe." Abridgements bring core meanings to the fore, but may also open for more associations and hence turn cryptical, psychologically speaking. Some such associations are very funny. Anyway, the more we abridge a sentence, the more possible meanings it may acquire. We need to balance here. If an abbreviated passage seems tendentious; maybe we had better take another look and think further. I point to a possibility: that some abridgements could be apt or proper in the wider perspective, and yet seem foolish, tendentious, and so on at first glance. Largely unrecognised, "Abr" may cover such interesting phenomena as "cryptical, funny, wild-looking" - it depends on how and how much a thing is abridged, eventually, and in part it depends on the mental associations of the reader. Better be careful!
Opp	"Opposed to," against, or "contrast it with -"	Clearly against statements, claims or tenets alluded to or referred to, as the case may be.
Heh (hum)	Humorous abstract	For the fun of it.
Cr #	Crossed, au contraire	Aggravated.
Cf	compare (confer)	Here is a regular feature in the citation business, but it can be lifted.

ALERT: There are other abbreviations to use too, and the ones suggested above complement them where appropriate. Standardised abbreviations can make writing much easier and more accurate. Here are some rather common ones: [Link]

Special Abbreviations Explained

Ellipses. If we want to remove something from the quotation in order to make it more pregnant to our purposes, more "snappy", and so on, we cut off what is not fit for our own ends and put three dots in place of what is left out. The omission of a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoated passage is indicated by ellipsis. It is a standard way of doing it, althoughdifferent style manuals instruct us to put the omission marks differently. Style manuals offer specified ways of omitting parts of quotations. The one I strive to keep up with, is the Chicago Manual of Style [Csm].

It could be that in some circumstances, a wealth of ellipses become too annoying. In such cases we may render, paraphrase, passages in question. It is one of the ways to avoid plagiarising others. Paraphrases coupled with salient quotations (abbreviated or not) make up a large part of academic writing.

For all that, here are a few added ways to alter the expressions of others and insert thoughts of your own into some text that we refer to.

1. "With" - Instead of ellipses far and wide

Great Britain's Royal Family, Mahatma Gandhi, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Tina Turner, and Yehudi Menuhin have been strong supporters of homeopathic medicine. [With Dana Ullman. ◦Ref.]

NOTE: A referred-to period has been abbreviated, the significant meaning is still intact, and you show that you render - and in part how - by the bracketed with and the established house rules that accompany its use. It is, simply, a non-elaborate way of rendering that may be fit in some circumstances.

2. "Mod" - Modifying means

"Great Britain's Royal Family, Mahatma Gandhi, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Tina Turner, and Yehudi Menuhin do not have much in common, except for the fact that they all have been strong supporters of homeopathic medicine. (1) There is one simple reason that these and other respected individuals the world over have supported homeopathic medicine: it works. [Dana Ullman]"

Here is one way among several of paraphrasing the verbatim quotation above:

The one reason why the Royal Family and other celebrities have supported homeopathic medisine, is that it works, writes Dana Ullman.

Instead of writing "writes Dana Ullman" and similar, likable phrases fit for paraphrases in well schooled writings, we may modify one or more phrases of his and let others know that they have been modified here, while you refer to the source as our style guide tells us to do:

The one reason why the Royal Family and other celebrities have supported homeopathic medisine, is that it works [Mod Dana Ullman].

Thus, [Mod Dana Ullman] typically means "Dana Ullman as rendered /modified by me". Again, the "mod" helps keeping some things "sweet and short," hopefully. I have found it too useful to discard yet.

3. "Abr" - Abbreviating much, sometimes with offhand-looking effects etc

If we cut away much of one or more sentences, sometimes the phrases and segments we end up with yet express fairly what the author we cite or "cite" could have in mind. The general aim is to reduce nuisances. At other times the abbreviations give rise to other impressions. This is a field to explore.

By tidy and proficient assembly of key lines put them together in the order they appear in the original, you have a linear, "stringed2 assortment. If you shuffle your segments, you may get a much wider repertoire, but its outcome could at first be like thin ice and shaky ground, that is, unsafe. It depends on which standards are to be bet. However, it is possible to have fun with quotations and half-quotations, and that is a neat point.

In some cases severe abbreviations are "tailored" from phrases and sentence parts far apart in the first place. Bringing them together into a close unit, may evoke humour and the like. Thus, through "closing the gaps" that ellipes are, some extract-like, terse statements may look funny, or biased, and so on.

By signalling (marking) that you have left out much and perhaps thereby changed some basic intentions of the original, you may feel free to seem offhand-like, depending on the circumstances. Severe abbreviations may or may not appear offhand-looking at first glance; it depends on the skills of writers and the mental associations called forth in readers.

So: We may insert three dots in a row to show where something is left out (ellipses), or we can use markers at the end of the line or paragraph that say so in one or more ways. Convenience can guide the good choice. What is more, deep pondering on key sentences may later prove much very helpful; that is the idea of very sound study methods as well. [Cf. lojong]

4. "Heh" and "hum" - An signal of humorous content by one way of looking

Persons differ. What one person finds humorous, another does not, and that is a caveat.

5. "Cr" - Aggravated

As mentioned in the table above, the Cr marking may be used if your response is something like au contraire, "to the contrary". It is a mark for pinpointed disagreeing with or gainsaying someone, then.

6. "Cf" - 'See', 'Vide'

Cf. is short for "confer", and means compare. It is in regular use throughout the academic world.

Further Notes

Coded markers like cf. and abr. and the rest of them - also acronyms for whole works and much else - can make referring and reading easier. So it is much used. A well defined corpus of works, such as the books of the Bible, can use abridged book titles.sc

Csm: The University of Chicago Press. The Chicago Manual of Style. 16th ed. London: The University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Uhm: Ullman, Dana: Discovering Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century. Rev ed. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1991:5.

Wrh: Rampolla, Mary Lynn. A Pocket Guide to Writing History. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin's, 2004.

Renditions