To fillet in the sense of
literary editing is a form of
censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
or
redaction effected by "cutting out" central letters of a word or name, as if the skeleton of a fish, and replacing them with
dash
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...
es, to prevent full disclosure (e.g. ' for "
William Pitt"). It was frequently practiced in publications of the 18th century in England. Its purpose was to inform interested readers in an obfuscated manner whilst at the same time avoiding the risk of being sued for illegal publication or
defamation or
libel by the overt naming of persons as having committed certain acts or spoken certain words. It was used for example in
parliamentary reports published in ''
The Gentleman's Magazine
''The Gentleman's Magazine'' was a monthly magazine founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term '' magazine'' (from the French ''magazine ...
'' from 1738 onwards under the title of the "Debates in the Senate of
Magna Lilliputia" in which in order to circumvent the prohibition of the publication of parliamentary debates of the English Parliament the real names of the various orators were filleted or replaced by
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
s or
anagrams;
[For example ''Sholmlng'' for Cholmondeley and ''Ptit'' for Pitt] for example, Sir
Robert Walpole was thinly disguised as '.
It was often performed not to avoid legal action but merely to show deference to the privacy of some great personage, or not to offend his or her imputed sense of modesty by naming him or her as the author of some great or worthy deed or act.
References
Obfuscation
Self-censorship
{{Lit-stub