# Proofread breaks quotes
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102
**Category:** Bug
**Tags:** pr-welcome, ai, ai-helper
**Created:** [May 7, 2025, 9:19am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102 "2025-05-07T09:19:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2025, 9:19am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/1 "2025-05-07T09:19:25Z")
Just FYI. The proofread breaks quotes. This has that way a while now.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2025, 3:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/2 "2025-05-07T15:03:32Z")
Doesn’t really break the quote, only the preview visualization.
I’d say this, plus the the animated diff we have on the roadmap, means we should move to doing a diff without the cooking part of it.
What do y’all think @awesomerobot @keegan ?
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### Author:  [@stance455](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stance455)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2025, 9:47am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/3 "2025-05-08T09:47:20Z")
Just to add to this…
We recently updated Discourse, and from what I recall, the plugin wouldn’t try to proofread quoted text (as it shouldn’t because technically it’s not really quoted anymore if it does).
Below is a screenshot…
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2025, 1:39am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/5 "2025-05-22T01:39:28Z")
> [@Falco](#):
>
> Doesn’t really break the quote, only the preview visualization.
@keegan just rolled out a new implementation, the diff is now applied to markdown and streamed 😍
It works great for this case and even handles fixing typos in quotes 🙂
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### Author:  [@bksubhuti](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bksubhuti)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2025, 3:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/6 "2025-08-13T15:53:45Z")
I’m here because I don’t think that proofread should fix quoted material (it is not quoted if it is “fixed”)
Is there a way to request a switch to not touch quoted material?
Btw: Great job on the recent upgrade and making so many plugins including AI as a standard. I’m self-hosted and I had to remove a few plugins in order to upgrade which had them as standard. (thanks for seamless experience preserving our emojis). I’m happy that everyone else who does not know how to add plugins now gets the full experience. I just set up the AI experience yesterday and it is good.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2025, 10:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/7 "2025-08-13T22:56:09Z")
> [@bksubhuti](#):
>
> Is there a way to request a switch to not touch quoted material?
I think we can do something here. It is somewhat tricky cause we need to hoist out content and then re-insert it into the post.
I certainly consider this a bug, will put a #pr-welcome on this for now, I _may_ get to it, but it is a bit tricky. The server side needs to partially parse the markdown, remove the quotes, give to proofreader and then add them back in, this may end up resulting in the proofreader getting an incoherent thing to proof read.
Tricky problem.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2025, 10:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/8 "2025-08-13T22:57:53Z")
> [@Jagster](#):
>
> The proofread breakkkks quotes.
We did some prompt engineering, but technically, this is still breaking a quote
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2025, 6:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/9 "2025-08-14T06:02:08Z")
Is proofreading quotes actually a real issue 🤔 After all, the error should have been fixed by the quoted user in the first place. Anyway, as long as the AI doesn’t change the context itself — and it does/did make such changes sometimes.
I almost hate to say this out loud, but worrying about changes per se sounds almost like code-based behavior where the most horrible thing that can happen is if x=y changes to x=1 even when the latter one is true too 😂
But sure. If a quote can stay untouched, just like a code block should be left alone, that would be nice or even great. But is it such a big thing that anybody should use a lot of paid hours to fix it?
Another sure. That is just my opinion and I know there are situations where a quote should be a 1:1 copy.
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### Author:  [@bksubhuti](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bksubhuti)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 11:28am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/10 "2026-04-30T11:28:39Z")
It can be a problem.. especially if ai makes a mistake with quoted religious texts like pāḷi material and makes a mistake doing it.
Or if the user forgot the special characters (which ai does a nice job of doing), then it really should not fix that, because the quote is the quote . He might lead to a small tangent by misspelling a pāḷī word, but if it is corrected, then it does not justify the rant for his miscommunication due to a spelling mistake.
So, I think it should preserve the quote.. it does not feel right for me to upgrade someone’s quote.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 4:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/11 "2026-04-30T16:04:18Z")
This was fixed in
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/38934](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/38934)
See it here:
If it still doesn’t work for you, try switching to a better model.
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### Author:  [@bksubhuti](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bksubhuti)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 4:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/12 "2026-04-30T16:12:31Z")
Excellent.. I updated earlier today before following up.
I look forward to keeping peoples bad “qotes.” 😀
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### Author:  [@bksubhuti](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bksubhuti)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 4:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/13 "2026-04-30T16:13:20Z")
Testing below for fun:
> [@bksubhuti](#):
>
> Excellent.. I updated earlier today before following up.
> I look forward to keeping peoples bad “qotes.” 😀
We use Grok 4 Fast because it is cheap.. but considering we spend 3 Cents per month… We can look at other models if there are problems. We have a slightly custom prompt agent. I’ll test now since we are updated.
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### Author:  [@bksubhuti](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bksubhuti)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 4:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/14 "2026-04-30T16:25:28Z")
Any suggestions for ai engines?
We have a custom persona called pali\_proofreader
> You are a markdown proofreader and a Pāḷi scholar. Fix grammar, Pāḷi diacritic marks, and wrong spellings for a Theravāda discourse discussion website. Correct typos and phrasing issues but keep the user’s original voice. Do not touch quoted blocks (except to remove accidental extra line breaks from copy/paste). Preserve paragraph formatting. If nothing needs fixing, return the text unchanged. Remove unnecessary line breaks, especially from PDF copy/paste. Fix incorrect or missing diacritic marks. Output ONLY the corrected text, with no explanations, no notes, and no commentary.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2026, 5:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/15 "2026-05-01T05:31:37Z")
Are you using examples? The default proofreader agent ships with 7 examples to help ground it, specially for quotes.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2026, 11:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/16 "2026-05-04T11:00:22Z")
This topic was automatically closed after 3 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
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### Author:  [@bksubhuti](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bksubhuti)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2026, 12:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/17 "2026-05-05T12:28:10Z")
> [@Proofread breaks quotes](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/15):
>
> Are you using examples? The default proofreader agent ships with 7 examples to help ground it, specially for quotes.
Can i find those examples so i can modify my custom personality for proofreading?
Actually all i need to do is add my stuff at the bottom of the system prompt that fixes this.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2026, 8:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/18 "2026-05-05T20:54:49Z")
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2026, 10:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/19 "2026-05-05T22:29:52Z")
Check the examples in the Proofreader agent on your instance, at `admin/plugins/discourse-ai/ai-agents/-22/edit`
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### Author:  [@bksubhuti](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bksubhuti)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2026, 2:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/20 "2026-05-06T02:34:47Z")
Okay.. i see the 7 examples.
It outputs the json format.
I’ll play with that.
Your response (and development work) is much appreciated.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2026, 3:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/proofread-breaks-quotes/365102/21 "2026-05-06T15:06:07Z")