{"id":1469,"date":"2018-03-20T15:36:43","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T19:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teachersfirst.com\/blog\/?p=1469"},"modified":"2019-04-05T15:29:54","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T19:29:54","slug":"say-it-aint-so-joe-using-quotations-from-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/say-it-aint-so-joe-using-quotations-from-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"“Say It Ain\u2019t So, Joe,” Using Quotations from the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We all love to use the perfect apropos aphorism to punctuate our writing. Quotations by famous people to prove a writer\u2019s point fill social media posts. How many choice memes are graced by just the right epigram?<\/p>\n

It just may be too easy find an appropriate quotation online as we have seen by the proliferation of misquoting. You have probably laughed at the meme of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s picture with the quote, \u201cThe problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity.” As reported by The New York Times<\/a>, <\/em>many\u00a0of the fake Lincoln quotation memes were created after a tweet in honor of his birthday mistakenly attributed another famous quote to him.<\/p>\n

Here are few other famous misquotes. Baseball season is around the corner. The most infamous scandal in baseball history was the throwing of the 1919 World Series by eight Chicago White Sox players, \u201cthe Black Sox\u201d which included Joe Jackson. Did a young boy actually ask Shoeless Joe as he left a courtroom, \u201cSay it ain\u2019t so, Joe?\u201d Turns out, no, according to the magazine\u00a0American Heritage<\/a><\/em>. Nor did Leo Durocher say, \u201cNice guys finish last,\u201d but instead he said that they finish seventh. This Day in Quotes website details the facts.<\/a><\/p>\n

March 20th is the anniversary of the famous Patrick Henry\u2019s saying, \u201cGive me liberty, or give me death.\u201d But did he really say this? It turns out, he probably did not say it as we quote it, but it takes some digging to find out the real story. No one had a copy of Henry\u2019s speech at the time, but many people remember it. His biographer William Wirt years later used the recollections<\/a> of men, such as Thomas Jefferson, to reconstruct the speech.<\/a><\/p>\n

The takeaway from these amusing fake Lincoln quotes and other examples is that as teachers, we must train ourselves and our students to be Internet detectives. Understanding how to find, verify, evaluate, and use information is the core of digital literacy and research skills. For teaching tips, see my blog post on Reliable Sources and C.R.A.A.P.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

This article<\/a> from Skeptical Science<\/em> discusses how to evaluate quotations using key questions.<\/p>\n