I’m reviewing a document and need to make reference to a number of quotes within it.
However where it should say 56,000,000 the author has written “56,00,000”.
If it was a grammatical error I’d use sic but does that work here, and what would be a good way to present the actual value? Would “The blah blah is 56,00,000 [sic - author intended to write 56,000,000]” work?
[sic] is for any error in original text, AFAIK. There are various interpretations of how to correct something that’s not obvious - a simple misspelling, usually. Your latter form would work in most cases, although for truly formal writing or academic publication you might want to get advice from whomever will be reviewing it.
You might also want to check that it’s actually a mistake. In India and other South Asian countries, the number 56,00,000 would be 56 lakhs and while it’s very confusing for people from outside, it’s widely used there and well understood. More details here: Indian numbering system - Wikipedia
For informal use, you could also use -
“…the blah blah is 56,00,000 [56,000,000]…” or even “…the blah blah is [56,000,000]…” and put the statement of the error in a footnote or endnote or embed it in the cite. Unless it’s a pivotal number and you have to be very careful in restating the author, it’s just a distraction to have such trivial corrections in the flow of text.
But yeah, not everyone uses Western/Anglo numbering style, so make sure it’s an actual error.
I was just about to ask the same thing. If it’s written in the Indian numbering system, it’s not an error, just a different style for where to put the separators, and the “correction” would be introducing an error. So look out for that.
Since we’ve already drifted away from the OP, I want to reinforce what AB said.
[sic] should be used for **any **mistake of **any **kind. Typos, misspellings, dropped letters, factual errors, any and every point at which the reader might think that the quoter might have transcribed it wrongly. It is there to show faithfulness to the original, not as a correction in its own right.
My personal style would be to use [sic - should be 56,000,000] rather than talk about the intentions of the author, but I wouldn’t call you wrong for doing it that way.
And if you’re going to use it properly, remember that the sic in [sic] must be italicized.
There’s a joke in here somewhere about two college freshmen of the current generation, with the punchline, “That’s sic!”
I’ve often wonder why news articles feel sic is necessary. As if people can’t figure out the meaning of a missspelled word for themselves.
Is it really necessary to flag the error, sic missspelled? Especially in a non-academic publication?
I see it a lot in quotes from documents. The deceased man left a note, goodeye [sic] cruel world. As if I needed to be told he misspelled a word in a suicide note.
It’s to show that it’s not the news article writer’s error, and that it is a faithful transcription of the original.
[sic] has nothing to do with ‘figuring out the meaning of a misspelled word’ - it’s to indicate the author is being careful with his/her quoting and the error is in the original. A misspelled word in an article just looks like a typo (and would get corrected in the editing phases, at least in theory) unless it’s flagged. It is sometimes important to indicate a misspelling, an incorrect date, a logical error in the original material.
It’s also possible to overuse the flag, and simply correcting an obvious typo in a citation is just fine except in the most demanding circumstances.
ETA: ninnja’ed [sic]
Ok. I’ll accept that the reporter wants to clarify that the typo or misspelling was in the original, quoted document… Thank you.
Thank you! I did not know this. Now I have to [sic] every [sic] I have used. 
It depends on what style book you’re following. MLA, for instance, does not require italics. The newest edition of the AP Stylebook now allows “sic,” as well, no italics, in parentheses. (Previously, AP Style did not allow for use of “sic” at all, except if it’s in the actual material being quoted. The style was to use an editor’s note to explain.)
In informal use, I’m sure many articles simply correct typos, misspellings, and minor grammatical errors without any notation at all. Sic is used mainly when the writer is trying to be precise in quoting the original written material. (Of course, it can also be used to poke fun at the original writer’s ignorance or carelessness, but that’s not its primary reason.)
It is Chicago Manual style and I find that most people who are in a specialized situation would already know that they have to use a specified style guide. Chicago style is probably the best for everybody else. I should have made that clear, though.
Theodore Bernstein, the chief copyeditor of The New York Times for decades, specifically calls out using [sic] to make fun of in his The Careful Writer. That’s from 1965 so the problem has been around for a while.
Or perhaps the comma is misplaced and the number should be 5,600,000?
Maybe. But the person reading the document says it should be 56,000,000. Why not assume the OP is right and that the question being asked is how to get this info to the final reader?
I’ve come across hundreds of typos exactly like this. In the overwhelming number of cases (maybe all) they are missing a zero rather than having a comma transposed. And never ever did they mean lakhs. Nitpicking is fun and all that, until it turns out there wasn’t a nit to pick.
Thanks to everyone. I’ve gone and used the “The blah blah is 56,00,000 [*sic *- actual value 56,000,000]”
There’s no confusion about numbering systems and it really should be considered a typo. I just want to head off the inevitable “Over here they say 56 million, why does this reference not agree?”