I see this more and more lately, as a result of quoting blog posts or what have you. Is there some rule that prevents editors from just correcting the spelling?
If I saw this coming from a celebrity in In Touch magazine or something, I’d think it was simply to make the celebrity look stupid. But I see it also in articles that are meant to paint the person in a positive light.
Here’s an example:
Why not just correct the obvious spelling error?
Well, there’s something a little icky about silently modifying quotes, particularly if they were originally already in written form. It feels like a violation of journalistic ethics. (With spoken quotes, things are somewhat looser, in that everyone’s normal speech needs a lot of editing to land on paper at all in line with conventional readability).
Not that you shouldn’t be allowed to make modifications to the quote, if you want to; you just need to make it clear that that’s what you’ve done. In the case of a simple spelling mistake, I guess it usually seems more convenient to use “(sic)” than to make an actual correction and insert a note about how spellings were cleaned up.
You just don’t edit quotes. You don’t want people to have a chance to come back and say “I didn’t say that”.
sic is used to signify that a quoted word or phrase is reproduced verbatim from the original (with errata) thus denying the possibility of an error in transcription.
In GD you can use it to make the quotee(sic) look silly.
Why correct it? I guess you could, but as Indistinguishable points out, there is an ethics concern. Changing the letters, words, and grammar may cause a loss of the author’s original context of the quote (though not in your example). Basically, leave it as is.
In other words, if you are going to quote something someone wrote, then quote it completely and exactly. Otherwise, why quote it? However, sometimes there are usages and spellings that are unconventional within those quotes. In those cases, you either use the quote and indicate that you are aware of those instances by using “sic,” or you don’t use the quote. A quote means that’s exactly what was said. And, yes, sometimes using “sic” does end up making the writer look silly, vapid, stupid, or ignorant. But that’s often the point. “This is exactly what this doofus actually said.” At the same time, it can give a clearer and unvarnished look at someone, and it seems that that’s always the purest version, and often the most desireable one.
I think it may be used to clarify that the quote is meant as written, when there is no error anyplace but it looks like it might have been one. For example, he said “they snatched a defeat from the jaws of victory (sic)”, that is, he put a clever twist on a cliche.
Tell us how this feels:
It’s not very respectful, is it?
OK, but an obvious spelling error? Who would come back and say “HEY! I didn’t spell that word correctly! Where’s my typo??!!”
But in my example above, the article was clearly trying to show Schilling in a positive light. Why would they want to make him look stupid? I just don’t see the point in going out of the way to provide an unvarnished look at someone, when all they had to do was correct a simple typo.
Changing the meaning of sentences by changing whole words or grammar structures would be one thing, but a simple typo? Why go out of your way to show that he didn’t have Spellchecker?
You greatly altered the text by adding / deleting entire words. I’m talking about spelling errors only. What would be disrespectful about correcting a simple spelling error?
Because a quote wouldn’t be a quote if you changed or altered it.
/thread
diggleblop, among others, have it exactly: quoting someone means quoting them, not changing it. The point of my post was to push you down the slippery slope. If you start deciding what needs changing rather than quoting it as it was, well, let’s just say you’d better not try quoting a shitload of 20th century literature.
Words to live by. 
So in my example, had Schilling read his blog post aloud, they would have printed his spoken words and spelled everything properly? Seems like they should do the same with a simple typo. That’s all I’m saying.
(I wanted the title of the OP to be “What’s the point of adding (sic) in a quote rather than just correcting typos?” but I ran out of space. That may have prevented some of the confusion).
Precisely, as was mentioned somewhere up thread, if you’re going to make any modification at all, you ethically need to make a note of it. I suppose you could correct the spelling, but then you’d be left with either having to put a note saying you corrected the spelling.
Besides, the (sic) is used to make YOU not look like a fool for possibly adding a typo. If someone else wrote something that is spelled in correctly, he should bear the responsibility of the mistake.
Further, with the advent of modern technology, say someone wanted to search on part or all of the quote. Without knowledge of which words were changed and how, they may not be able to find the relevant article.
So here’s your options:
IMO, if a typo is that egregious to you, find a way to modify you use of the quote to avoid it. In this case, he’s an athlete; I don’t think too many people will have their opinions of him altered by his inability to spell a word that isn’t exactly “cat”.
If you’re making a quote, you make a quote without alteration. Of course, you could simply report (Mr?) Schilling’s words without quoting:
Spoken quotations are often edited and corrected since we don’t have the chance to edit them, and most news organizations don’t offer the interviewee the chance to clean up the quotes. When I get interviewed by trade magazines I usually get a copy to correct before publication, though.
For the OP, if the quote was from a blog, I can understand not changing it, since the original was available. (Isn’t sic a note to the proofreader that the misspelling should stand?) There are also more aggressive reasons for not correcting things. Where I used to live a school board member who was a real loon would often write letters to the local paper. They eventually got so fed up with him that they published his incoherent ramblings as submitted, which made him look like the idiot he was - a public service IMHO.
How much is an explanation really required? I see bracketed quotes all the time. In most cases, they fill in missing information:
The defendant said, “Yeah, it was that fucktard [Robin] Williams who did this to me.”
But I also see it used (improperly??) to correct obvious mistakes without further ado:
“It was an honor and a [privilege] to be allowed to play here.”
And of course there are the normal edits for grammatical continuity:
“[A]nd despite being stupid, he saved the day.”
It’s mostly a not-so-subtle way of showing the dudes is a retard because somehow he managed to let a typo slip past him. :rolleyes:
The bit about “we can’t edit your words” is silly as Newspapers commonly print my letters and they often edit them- for brevity and also an occassional typo. They don’t add “(sic)” when they do so. I have also been quoted in the news and they didn’t add “(sic)”.
So, it’s not really nessesary when it’s an obvious typo. It’s just a dig.
The letters section usually includes a note about how letters can and will be edited for publication, for such reasons as length, typographical cleaning up, etc. When you’ve been quoted in the news, has it been a quote of your speech or your writing? Did something you wrote end up getting attributed to you in a modified form as a direct quote? If so, I’d be quite surprised (and peeved) at the silent editing.