Sic!

Michael Quinion, editor of World Wide Words, a must for serious word lovers, collects mistakes in print spotted by his readers. He entitles the collection "Sic!"

A bit on the term.

Sic is a Latin word meaning "thus," "so," "as such," or "in such a manner." It is used when writing quoted material to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, punctuation or meaning in the quote has been reproduced verbatim from the original and is not a transcription error (i.e. it appeared thus in the original). It is normally placed within the quoted material, in square brackets and often italicized—[sic]. Alternatively it can appear after the quote in parentheses (round brackets)—(sic). It had a long vowel in Latin (sīc), meaning that it was pronounced like the English word "seek," [ˈsiːk]. However, it is normally anglicized to /ˈsɪk/, like the English word "sick."

Here's what Quinion's readers spotted recently.

• Hazel McDonald told me of the most recent Bush Fire Survival Plan, issued to residents of New South Wales, Australia. She comments that one piece of advice requires psychic ability: “The safest option is for you and your family to leave early, hours or the day before a fire occurs.”

• David Read and Anthony Chadwick were startled by a report on the CBC News website on 15 September: “Police in the Bahamas believe they have found the remains of a boater who disappeared off a beach where one of the Jaws movies was filmed in the belly of a shark.”

• Diana Platts encountered an accident report in the Shropshire Star of 8 September: “In the collision, two cyclists were injured. One appears to be a 12 year-old-boy and a woman.”

• Andrew Haynes e-mails, “Since the BBC2 series Gareth Malone’s Extraordinary School for Boys shows Malone trying to improve the boys’ literacy, it’s particularly unfortunate that the TV review in the Times on Friday 10 September included the sentence, ‘So Malone ... coached the boys in how to martial an argument.’”

• Suzanne McCarthy read a news item on AOL news on 15 September. about a traffic incident in Orange County, Florida, during which a driver crashed a car and vanished into a wooded area. It was headlined “One-Legged Man Escapes on Foot”.