Thursday, April 05, 2007

How to use [sic]

Interesting error here - and it seems to be a common one whenever most people give it a try: the misuse of the abbreviation sic within brackets inside a quotation.

"A rousing round of complaints and emails later, Berry posted an apology on his blog. It says in part: 'When I’m wrong, I’m big enough to admit it. (sic) I was simply wrong.' "

Hmmm!

The abbreviation sic is to be italicized and used in brackets [ ] not parentheses ( ), for one thing. For another, it is to be used to indicate that the writer understands that the original speaker or writer (the quoted person) made an error. The bracketed abbreviation - [sic] - is then to be inserted immediately after the error. Is that what's going on here? I don't really know. There is an error there (the vague use of the pronoun it), but is that what she is recognizing? If so, her post should have read like this: A rousing round of complaints and emails later, Berry posted an apology on his blog. It says in part: "When I’m wrong, I’m big enough to admit it [sic]. I was simply wrong."

It would certainly be nice to be able to get inside this writer's head and find out what she thought she was writing! Maybe I'll ask her.

2 comments:

John said...

Great post. Thanks. A question: do you use sic after every intentional error? For instance, if I'm writing a paragraph in stupid mode for affect, do I use sic after every misspelt word? If there are plenty of errors, the whole paragraph may end up looking sick :-)

Marilynn said...

Apparently, you didn't read closely enough. What does this mean?

" ... to be used to indicate that the writer understands that the original speaker or writer (the quoted person) made an error."

Go into that linked askoxford webpage for more information.