should quotes of what people have said be spelt in the way it was said?

Question

To make my question clearer, and to put it in context. I photographed somebody, and interviewed them to put a quote in the caption to go with the photo. They said “That’s why we smoke and that, cos there’s nothing to do.” Should I leave it like this, or maybe take out a word, and correct their english? to leave with me with this: “That’s why we smoke, because there’s nothing to do.”

Ok I've kind of decided that I don't really want to change the quote in any way, but should I add [sic] after incorrectly spoken english? when I'm using the quote on a photo caption. Is it important do you think? I don't want to make the caption look too busy...

Answer 1

If you quote, most of the time you have to use their words, but since it was voiced, you can correct spelling and grammar.
You'd only leave it if you were going for an effect. Use [sic].
If you don't use quotation marks, you can write what you understood the person to mean.
We smoke because there's nothing else to do.
C. :)!!

Answer 2

When you quote, you quote. If you don't say it exactly how they said it (warts and all, as they say), it isn't a quote.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Well, I'm SORRY if you screwed it up Neil, but that IS what you said.

"Ich bin ein berliner."

Okay, we all know JFK wasn't really a jelly doughnut, but that is precisely what he said.

Look, if we corrected things people said before quoting them, we really wouldn't get the deep emotional concern of MANY prominent political figures over "nucular proliferation", or as Jimmy Carter called it, "Nukeah Po'ifa'ashun". More than that, if you tried to correct things, we'd miss the whole point of most of what Yogi Berra ever said.

Answer 3

put it how they said it, but after "cos" write [sic]...that lets people know that you know it is incorrect.