To fillet in the sense of
literary editing is a form of
censorship or
redaction
Redaction is a form of editing in which multiple sources of texts are combined and altered slightly to make a single document. Often this is a method of collecting a series of writings on a similar theme and creating a definitive and coherent wo ...
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 b ...
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
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
or
libel
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
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'' 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
pseudonyms or
anagram
An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...
s;
[For example ''Sholmlng'' for Cholmondeley and ''Ptit'' for ]Pitt
Pitt most commonly refers to:
*The University of Pittsburgh, commonly known as Pitt, a university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
**Pitt Panthers, the athletic teams of the University of Pittsburgh
* Pitt (surname), a surname o ...
for example, Sir
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745; known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole) was a British statesman and Whig politician who, as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader ...
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
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