Gramer girl, here I'm a Neon Focardy and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language.

Writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, we'll talk about how the internet can make it both easier and harder to find

who really first said famous quotations.

And we'll talk about why it's so tricky to figure out why a letter is silent in certain

words.

When the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations was first published in 1941, it all seemed so

simple.

It was taken for granted that a quotation was a familiar line from a great poet or a

famous figure in history, and the source could easily be found in standard literary

works or history books.

Those early compilers of quotations didn't think of fake facts in the internet.

Fake facts, or perhaps more accurately misunderstandings, have been around in the world of quotations

for a long time.

Often, when people see a line they like, they simply copy it and repeat it.

Take for instance, at the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.

If at the time of reading, the words were attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato, this

would be repeated too.

But in fact, it was not Plato who originally said it.

Although it's found in his work, the symposium, he was explicitly quoting the playwright

Euripides.

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