Tony Cooper
If this statement is made:

"The United State's borders are secure as they can be considering the number of people assigned to keeping our borders secured."

And someone says:

"You say our 'borders are secure', but hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants cross our borders every year."

The phrase "borders are secure" has been quoted out of context even if the original statement is presented intact and visible to read.

Sandman
No, the original statement is *not* present in the quote. It has been taken out of its context and presented without it, removing the intended meaning of the quote. Whether or not the original text is present or not is not relevant to the fact that it was omitted from the *quote*.

Tony Cooper
Put on your reading glasses, Jonas. I said: The phrase "borders are secure" has been quoted out of context even if the original statement is presented intact and visible to read.

I did not say the original statement is not present in the quote.

Sandman
No, I did. and context has been omitted. In other words, 100% in agreement with the wikipedia definition you claim is wrong.

Tony Cooper
I'm beginning to see why you can't grasp the meaning of "quoted out of context". You evidently think that if something is quoted exactly as it was written, that it can't be something that is quoted out of context.

You think that "context" is something that is only *in* what was quoted. That's wrong.

The quote can be a complete sentence in its entirety, or more, from the original passage and the quote can still be a quote out of context.

The context, in this case, is what surrounds that sentence. The context is the entire text of the passage.

When you pull a phrase or an entire sentence out of the surrounding context and use it in such a way that it changes the meaning of what was written in the entire passage, it is "quoting out of context" even if it is an exact replication of part of that passage.

In the paragraph above where you say "The original text is not present in the quote. Hence, the quote is taken out of context" is where you go wrong.

My example above was a valid example of a quote out of context. While the words were quoted were quoted exactly as written, without the surrounding context they change the meaning of what was intended.

Sandman
If this statement is made:

"The United State's borders are secure as they can be considering the number of people assigned to keeping our borders secured."

And someone says:

"You say 'The United State's borders are secure as they can be considering the number of people assigned to keeping our borders secured.', but hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants cross our borders every year."

But then again, that wouldn't be taking it out of context.

Tony Cooper
Wrong reasoning.

It's about quoting a part that changes the meaning of the entirety, not about how much was quoted.

Go back and re-read that Wikipedia article and ponder over the part that says: "Contextomy refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context in a way that distorts the source's intended meaning, a practice commonly referred to as "quoting out of context". The problem here is not the removal of a quote from its original context (as all quotes are) per se, but to the quoter's decision to exclude from the excerpt certain nearby phrases or sentences (which become "context" by virtue of the exclusion) that serve to clarify the intentions behind the selected words."

Pay attention to the reference to "exclude...nearby phrases...that serve to clarify the intentions". That's the context involved.