For example:Another insight: [Madoff]'s upset that his wife hasn't come down to see him because of [her] fears that the media is at the prison, and that she'll be harassed He thinks the family is trying to avoid the media. Well, the son's wife decided not to have a funeral apparently for fear of a media circus.There's two brackets in the passage above. What are they really called and what do they mean?
They are called square brackets. They can mean a lot of things depending on the field, but in this context, it means that a word has been altered slightly or added so that the qutote can make sense in the new context. In this case, the original quote may have been: He's upset that his wife hasn't come down to see him because of fears that the media is at the prison While the antecedent of the first he may have been clear in the original context, it has lost its clarity when the quote is pulled out. Thus, the author has decided to clarify by changing it to [Madoff]'s. The square brackets indicate that the author modified the quote slightly to enhance clarity. Likewise, the second square bracket clarifies who fears that the media is at the prison, added for a similar purpose as above. Hope this helps!
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They're brackets. They show that the words in brackets weren't actually said by the person being quoted, but the author of the article thinks they're needed to make the sentence understandable. The original quote might have been, He's upset that his wife or That jerk's upset that his wife or something like that.
