For the record, there is a way to highlight changes. An ellipses denotes that material was left out. Brackets denote that something was changed. In either case, the intent should never be to alter what was said. Using yours as an example:
> That was not intended to be read as a literal quote...[It was intended to] paraphrase instead of literally copying words (esp. if there's no good short sequence of words to borrow), but quote marks are still used. I wish we had a better notation for this. I'm sorry to have caused confusion.
> That was not intended to be read as a literal quote...[It was intended to] paraphrase instead of literally copying words (esp. if there's no good short sequence of words to borrow), but quote marks are still used. I wish we had a better notation for this. I'm sorry to have caused confusion.
[0]: https://writingcommons.org/article/inserting-or-altering-wor...