say what?

     You may read a news article with a quote form an "unnamed source".  This does not exist. A quote comes from a specific and particular source. The source is named, and anyone reading the quote can check the credentials, where possible, of the person being quoted. An "unnamed source" might as well be "the man on the street" or "overheard in a bar". It may be an interesting article, but the "quote" will not make a point, or win an argument, because we don't know who said it, or if the author merely invented it.
     The other side of the "quote" equation is accuracy. When we see quotation marks, we have the right to assume that the words within the quotation marks are precisely what the speaker said. They may be taken from a written source--one that the reader can check for him or herself. If they are reported as part of a conversation, they must be accurately reported. This is what the quotation marks mean, so anything less than complete accuracy is deception.

quote "end quote"

     Something I actually saw in print, that took a moment to decipher--"blah blah quote blah blah and quote". I don't remember the author's name, or the name of the publication.  What the author should have typed was--"blah blah".  Nothing more. The writer must have taken this from an audio source, such as might be used by a reporter phoning in a story, or dictating a story into a recorder for later transcription  In order to let the person hearing the tape ( or call ) know which words were a quotation ( the words of someone other than the author ), the speaker said "quote" to denote the beginning of the quotation, and "end quote" to denote the end of the quotation. Quotation marks are always used in pairs--one set at the beginning, one at the end. By placing words in quotation marks, the author indicates that the words were said, or written, by someone else. The words within the quotation marks should be faithfully rendered, and their source identified.


Example--Marie Antoinette supposedly said "let them eat cake", when told that the peasants had no bread.