When magazines put a [word] in brackets...what does it mean?

Question

When magazines put a [word] in brackets...what does it mean?

Answer 1

It only happens when you quote someone and you need to add a word to either clarify the meaning of the sentence or to make it grammatically correct. Here is an example:

Tina says: "Amy is really cool and pretty. One time, she lent me a book".

If you only wanted to quote the second part and you hadn't already mentioned Amy was the person you were talking about, you would change it to: "One time, [Amy] lent me a book".

The "she" turns to "Amy" to indicate to the reader who they are talking about.

However, if you were writing in the third person you would change it to the third person: Amy was nice to Tina who talked about how "she lent [her] a book".

The "me" turns to "her" to make it grammatically correct within the sentence.

If, on the other hand, you want to miss things out, you put [...]: "Amy is really cool [...]. One time, she lent me a book".

The dots indicate that there is something missing. However, when adding them you must keep the sentence grammatically correct.

Hope [that] makes sense!

Answer 2

It seems to be used when they are quoting someone, and the person did not actually say that word--but they put the word in brackets to clarify the quote, since the reader does not have the context of the quote.

Answer 3

Say for example I was asked a question about a friend called sarah, and I answered by saying "she is doing fine", they may change it to "she (sarah) is doing fine" just so it's clear who I'm talking about. That's why they do it, to clarify who or what the speaker is talking about.

Answer 4

The word in the square brackets was not actually in the original quotation, but it has been added in order to make sense of the quotation in the current context.