the record · exhibit 18 · loop 02, Production
The critic corrects itself
The production log records the grader’s own error: a rule inferred from too small a sample and applied four times, reversed where the author called it.
· principle 7 of twelve
What it shows
Principle seven applies to the grader. The production log for the rework records the critic’s own error: a rule inferred from too small a sample and reported four times as a gate finding, reversed where the author called it. A method that cannot indict its own instruments only ever reports good news. This is what the indictment looks like when it is written down.
The principles are numbered on the method page. Cuts in the excerpts below are marked with an ellipsis in brackets; the three kinds of cut are stated on the record’s front page.
From the record
## ★ CORRECTION — the italic-speech "defect" was my error I converted italic speech to quotation marks in **Ch 8, 12, 14 and 24**, reporting each as a gate finding on the grounds that italic dialogue appears nowhere in canon and that two conventions in one chapter is a defect. **Both halves were wrong**, and the sweep proved it: - **Canon Ch 5** renders an entire in-scene conversation with Allegra in *italics with zero quotation marks* (*"She likes you better than she likes me"*; *"And you've decided that means something."*). **Ch 20** does the same. - **Canon Ch 7 mixes them** — 52 quote characters alongside an italic speech span — inside a single chapter. Mixing is attested practice, not a fault. The book uses at least three registers: **quoted** (in-scene, verbatim), **italic unquoted** (remembered, habitual, or reported at a distance), and **fully unquoted** (the Pope's private voice, Ch 32/36). I inferred a rule from too small a sample and applied it four times. **Ch 8 REVERTED (author's call).** […] line is introduced *"he said to me once"* — the remembered-habitual register, exactly where canon reaches for italics — so it is italic again, while Okonkwo's in-scene *"You are the cellar,"* stays quoted. The chapter now mixes the two the way Ch 7 does. **Ch 12, 14, 24 left as quoted.** In all three the speaker is *in scene* — the keeper laying a leaf on the table, the brother across a crucifix-bare room — where quotes are the commoner canon choice. Defensible as produced; not required.