Sic

In the English language, the Latin adverb is used as an adverb, and derivatively as a noun and as a verb. The adverb sic, meaning 'intentionally so written', first appeared in English . It is derived from the Latin adverb , which means 'so', 'thus', 'in this manner'. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the verbal form of sic, meaning 'to mark with a sic, emerged in 1889, E. Belfort Bax work in The Ethics of Socialism being an early example. Folk etymologies On occasion, sic has been misidentified as an acronym (and therefore sometimes misspelled with periods): s.i.c. is said to stand for "spelled/said in copy/context", "spelling is correct", "spelled incorrectly", and other such folk etymology phrases. These are all incorrect and are simply backronyms from sic. ==Modern usage==

Use of sic greatly increased in the mid-20th century. For example, in United States state-court opinions before 1944, sic appeared 1,239 times in the Westlaw database; in those from 1945 to 1990, it appeared 69,168 times, over 55 times as many. Its use as a form of ridicule has been cited as a major factor in this increase. Conventional use The bracketed form [sic] is most often inserted into quoted or reprinted material to indicate meticulous accuracy in reproducing the preceding text, despite appearances to the reader of an incorrect or unusual orthography (spelling, punctuation, etc.), grammar, syntax, fact, or logic. Several usage guides recommend that a bracketed sic be used primarily as an aid to the reader, not as an indicator of disagreement with the source. Use to denote archaisms and dialect Sic may show that an uncommon or archaic expression is reported faithfully, such as when quoting the U.S. Constitution: "The House of Representatives shall their Speaker ..." However, several writing guidebooks discourage its use with regard to dialect, such as in cases of American and British English spelling differences. The appearance of a bracketed sic after the word analyse in a book review led Bryan A. Garner to comment, "all the quoter (or overzealous editor) demonstrated was ignorance of British usage". Bryan A. Garner dubbed this use of sic "ironic", providing the following example from Fred Rodell 1955 book Nine Men: This is a reference to the similar-sounding word persecution. ==Formatting==

Where sic follows the quotation, it takes brackets: [sic]. The word sic is often treated as a loanword that does not require italics, and the style manuals of New Zealand, Australian and British media outlets generally do not require italicisation. Because sic is not an abbreviation, placing a full stop/period inside the brackets after the word sic is erroneous, although the California Style Manual suggests styling it as a parenthetical sentence only when used after a complete sentence, like so: (Sic.) ==Alternatives==

Replacement Some guides, including The Chicago Manual of Style, recommend "quiet copy-editing" (unless where inappropriate or uncertain) instead of inserting a bracketed sic, such as by substituting in brackets the correct word in place of the incorrect word or by simply replacing an incorrect spelling with the correct one. Recte Alternatively, to show both the original and the suggested correction (as they often are in palaeography), one may use the Latin adverb recte (meaning rightly), in the form of writing the actual form, followed by recte and the correct form together in brackets. For example: According to the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music Style Sheet, there should be no punctuation, for example no colon, before the correct form when using recte. Read A third alternative is to follow an error with sic, a comma or colon, "read", and the correct reading, all within square brackets, as in the following example: ==See also==