I have a strange habit, I've only recently noticed, of guessing the context of partial quotations. Put another way, if I read an article which quotes somebody, and the author integrates part of that quotation into their sentence, I try to figure out what the original sentence might've said.

An example (in fact, the one that prompted this discovery) is the following sentence:

[A game developer is] prepared to be held up to “internet ridicule if that’s not the case”

My initial guess was that the developer actually said "I'm prepared to be held up to internet ridicule if that’s not the case," but, if so, why wouldn't the author have quoted all possible words? I try to imagine that the author quoted as much of the original as possible given the sentence structure he'd decided on. So then I imagined the interview, and the developer saying "Commence the internet ridicule if that's not the case!" That fits, and it makes the words quoted the only words that could've been quoted given that sentence structure.

It's a weird little game. Does anyone else do this, or is my diversion unusual?


(For your potential curiosity's sake, the article I was reading was about Overlord: Dark Legend, an upcoming title for the Wii, about which I'm cautiously optimistic.)