Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 27

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Misspelled words in quotes: [sic], (sic), or [sic]  ?

Is there a standard or consensus at WP?

From what I've seen, [sic] is certainly the most common. Imho it should only be italicised if the quote is also italicised - "WikiPaedia [sic] is an online encyclopaedia" and "WikiPaedia [sic] is an online encyclopaedia". Thryduulf 13:37, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
My understanding is that it's in italics because it's Latin. And it should be in square brackets rather than round ones to show that it's not part of the quotation. Ann Heneghan (talk) 14:32, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I've never seen this written down as a policy – well, I haven't looked for it either – but my observation has been that if you have a reason to put a particular word in italics (perhaps for emphasis), but the passage is already in italics, then, to get the same effect (i.e. of making the word stand out), you cancel the italics for that particular word. So, according to your example, it would be: "WikiPaedia [sic] is an online encyclopaedia". Ann Heneghan (talk) 14:46, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't think you need italics. The wikipedia convention is not to italicize latin words that are commonly used in English. Also, its already in brackets, so it stands out. It should definitely be brackets, though. Parentheses serve a different role and, as far as I've ever noticed, brackets are always used where an editor adds comment or clarification to a quotes. Chuck 15:35, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

My instincts, the above arguments, and the general WP idea of keeping things simple, tell me that we should use brackets and plain text, and, when the whole quote is italicized, italicize the [sic] as well.

Thank you to all who played. paul klenk 16:08, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I strongly suggest keeping things simpler still. Normally there is no benefit in preserving the error (which in modern-day books is more likely to be an error made by a proof-reader rather than by the author), and so there is no need to use sic. It's only in the very rare cases where there is a particular need to quote something with a misspelling, or to quote something that, although right, looks as though it might be wrong, that sic is needed, jguk 17:53, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed that [sic] can also be used politically, to denigrate an opponent. So, for example, if you're writing about some religious, ethical, or political subject, and you make a grammatical or spelling error, it's quite likely that your opponent will quote your words exactly, with a little [sic] thrown in, to show that you're not very educated, and that therefore your views are unlikely to be of any relevance. It doesn't seem to happen so much when people are writing about uncontroversial subjects. Ann Heneghan (talk) 18:09, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
While [sic] can be used as a dig, and should not be so used in wikipedia, I think it has a place. I general i disagree with jguk's point above. I think when quoting explicitly one should quote exactly, and use ... or brackets to show any changes, including spelling corrections. One cannot safely assume what the source of an error in a printed work is, but i feel it is dishonest to correct silenetly in what purports to be a quote. DES (talk) 18:22, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree. We should not be correcting quotes. Changes to quotes should be limited to, for example, changing verb tense to match the non-quoted part of a sentence. Any such change to a quote should be bracketed. Addressing Ann's point, I agree any "digs" within a WP article should be avoided, there's plenty of legitimate uses for [sic] though. Chuck 18:56, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Chuck completely here. Changing the text within quotes is not honest scholarship. Jonathunder 19:21, 2005 September 6 (UTC)
Wow, I opened up a can of worms. More issues than I imagined. There are some interesting points here. I just added a quote, directly copied (and credited) from a paper of a cultural anthropologist. He misspelled Dalmatian as Dalmation, and DeVil as DeVille. I [sic]ked him, but not as a dig -- but to show that it was his mistake, not mine. I think that is the purpose of the [sic], to a] let the reader know that the author quoting the text is not making the mistake, b] but is aware of it, and c] keeping true to the original. paul klenk 21:21, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Why is it important to preserve a typo? Surely good writing demands that you correct it? I know of no honest record that doesn't correct obvious and unintentional errors (unless preserving them actually adds to what is being reported), jguk 19:37, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, a minor typo, perhaps, but then where do you draw the line? Ann Heneghan (talk) 20:08, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

The question of [sic] was discussed at the Terri Schiavo talk page. Michael Schiavo testified in court that he had taken up nursing because he wanted "to learn how to take care of Terri." No Wikipedian was present to hear his testimony, so we relied on the official court transcript, which misspelled her name as Terry. The article had, "I want to learn how to take care of Terry [sic]." I removed the [sic], since we were quoting Michael's words (e.g. "Michael said", not "the court transcript said that Michael said"). I explained in the edit summary that Michael did not misspell his wife's name when he was giving oral testimony. The [sic] was replaced by another editor, on the grounds that we got our information from the transcript. I disagreed, but didn't feel it was worth squabbling over. Later, someone else removed it again, and we came to some agreement to leave it out. The discussion is now archived, but it can be seen at Talk:Terri_Schiavo/archive32#sic. Ann Heneghan (talk) 20:15, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

That is a special case, where the original source was oral, and the error appears to ahve occured in making a transcript. As for "obvious" typos in a written source, i would either 1) leave them in possibly with [sic], 2) corrent them, with the corrected words in brackets, or 3) correct them, with a parenthetical note like "Obvious typos in source have been corrected" similar to the "My emphasis" note used when addign italics or bold to a quote that did not already contain them. What I would not do is to correct a written source in what purports to be an expclicit quotation with no indication that I had done so. DES (talk) 21:52, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
Another alternative, especially if the errors are extensive and would be too distracting or make the passage difficult to read, would be to just paraphrase--still giving proper credit, of course. DES is right that an explicit quote should not ever be changed without alerting the reader. Doing so would be dishonest or sloppy, and Wikipedia should not have either. CDThieme 22:00, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I have to agree with DES here. Quotes alert readers that this is exactly what was said or written. The only exceptions to that I am aware of is quotes in translation and/or where it is explicitly stated how the quote was changed. The world is not the wikipedia, we don't correct quotes just because we can. Jguk, show me a style manual that allows changes to quoted items for any reason without alerting readers. Chuck 23:00, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Let me quote the entry from Fowler's Modern English Usage in full:

Latin for 'so, thus', is inserted (within brackets) after a quoted word or phrase to confirm its accuracy as a quotation, or occasionally after the writer's own word to emphasize it as giving his deliberate meaning. It amounts to 'Yes, he did say that', or 'Yes, I do mean that, in spite of your natural doubts'. It should be used only when the doubt is natural; but reviewers and controversialists are tempted to pretend that it is, because sic provides them with a`neat and compendious form of criticism. Examples: I probably have a different sense of morality to [sic] most people - Alan Clark as reported in the Chicago Tribune, 2 June 1994; Could she take Tatler, Vanity Fair and Health magazines that were laying (sic) around at home?- V.Grove, 1994 (reporting a Desert Island Discs interview with Britt Ekland); his [an inventor's] crudely written notice that it 'does [sic] the work of a press that would cost £10,000' - Spectator, 1994.

I suggest we shouldn't be reviewers or controversialists, jguk 23:08, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Which edition? Chuck 01:57, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
I just read this quote again and realized two things. First, that there are citations from 1994, implying my question above is stupid. (Its clearly a recent edition.) Second, I found I do not quite understand the sentence "It should be used only when the doubt is natural; but reviewers and controversialists are tempted to pretend that it is, because sic provides them with a`neat and compendious form of criticism." Is there a missing word? Should it have been "pretend that it is ____"? Or does "it" refer to something besides "[sic]"?
Also, we've already addressed that [sic] shouldn't be used to condescend. Because I'm confused about that sentence, its not clear whether you think the cited paragraph supports not using [sic] at all, or whether it merely supports that [sic] shouldn't be used to condescend. Chuck 01:07, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
I read the sentance to say that "reviewers and controversialists" are tempted to pretend that there is a doubt or even an error when there is none, to allow them to use [sic] in an snide or pretentious way. Since we already agreed that it shouldn't be used in that way on wikipedia, and since many of the uses Fowleer is pointing to as dubious are when a writer inserts [sic] after the writer's own word, to say "Yes i was really smart enough to mean the more obscure use of this word", which we also shouldn't do on wikipedia, i don't think this caution from Fowler really applies. We should be clear that here [sic] should only be used when quoting an outside source, IMO. DES (talk) 15:01, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest that we avoid sic altogether, which is another one of these pretentious Latin thingies best avoided (like i.e., e.g., ibid., op. cit., etc.) and stick to a standard English-language note after quotations. Something like (spellings as in original). However, given that, I don't see that there is anything "misleading" about correcting misspellings when quoting. Making sure that we use the original (incorrect) spellings seems about as important as making sure we use the original font. The message is the message, not the medium. Language is words, not a series of letters, and quotations are of language. Nohat 20:14, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I feel strongly that we should be using 'sic' (ideally as '(sic)' rather than '[sic]' as the latter could be mistaken by an editor for an external link) for two reasons. Firstly that no encyclopedia should *ever* change a quotation / quoted source. If readers cannot trust us to report a quote correctly why should they trust us about anything we write? Secondly, because there is no better way to encode that we have provided the quote verbatim. "sic" means "spelling as in original" (not plural, btw) or "word choice as in original" and is much shorter / less obtrusive. It is also fairly common in reference materials. Now if we were to discuss the title of this section I'd rather see "Misspelt words ..." or "Misspelling of words ..."! --Vamp:Willow 20:23, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Further up this page, someone asked for even one style manual which permits changing letters inside litteral quotes. A passage from Fowler was given, but nothing in Fowler permits this, not in that passage or anywhere. No style manual I am aware of does, and the reason is this is regarded as dishonest, especially in the academic world. If I as a reader find that a source has changed something in literal quotes without alerting me somehow, I will not trust that source. Wikipedia should have a strong expectation that we are honest with our sources, even to the letter and punctuation mark, if we are to be regarded as worth serious consideration. CDThieme 20:36, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

If you do any modification of a quote, it's no longer a quote in my opinion. Quotes should not be changed! If there are spelling or grammar errors in the orginal printed source, they should stay. If there are grammar errors in a spoken word source, they should stay.
On the other hand, I've always HATED [sic] within quotes. It is so incredibly jarring and disruptive to reading the text. My personal opinion is that at the end of the quote, there should be a footnote reference. In the footnote itself, there should be a short note that says something like "spelling as in original source, WikiPaedia is usually spelled Wikipedia". BlankVerse ∅ 20:49, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
A footnote is another reasonable way of handling this. I have seen cases where handwriten documents were transcribed with footnotes that inconsistant spelling or punctuation had been regualrized. Certianly a footnote would be preferable to many uses of [sic] within the same passage. That said, [sic] is the standard academic method of indicating this, and is not IMO at all prtentious, nor do I find it any more intrusive than a footnote that requires me to look eslewher eand possibly then look back to see exactly what it is refering to, and that might be confused with a footnote present for citation purposes. I think that use of [soic] is perfectly acceptable, and indeed ought to be favored in appropriate situations in wikipedia. DES (talk) 21:02, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
I find this slippery-slope argument ("If readers cannot trust us to report a quote correctly why should they trust us about anything we write") uncompelling. There is no reason that correcting misspelled words should necessarily imply that any semantic modification has taken place, and anyone who thinks otherwise is paranoid and mistaken, because many news organizations make much greater changes to quotations than correcting spellings all the time, to not great outcry. Again, language is words, not a particular series of letters. If the spellings aren't somehow relevant to the quotation, then pointing out errors is unnecessary and distracting, especially given that in most cases spelling errors aren't the author's fault, but the result of a careless copyeditor down the line of publication.
Furthermore, sic may mean "spelling(s) as in original", but to much fewer people than the English words "spellings as in original". Wikipedia need not be any more academic than necessary, because "academic" in this sense just means narrow in accessability. We should be writing in plain (but not necessarily "simple") English, not an obtuse combination of English and obscure Latin abbreviations. Since Wikipedia is not paper, I don't see that there is any compelling need to compact text at the expense of understandability. Nohat 21:08, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
The writer's own word? Oh, please... Chuck, the implied word is "so", thus: "...reviewers and controversialists are tempted to pretend that it is so" ("is indeed natural"). Use of [sic] draws unnecessary attention to the editor, a vulgarism. Odd spellings and usages in quotes at Wikipedia are easily identified for future editors with <!--[sic]-->, which invisibly serves the only legitimate purpose of [sic] while preserving an unruffled surface of the quoted text. Mere typos are silently corrected by everyone, unless the original writer's point is at issue. --Wetman 21:21, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
The standard English for [sic] is [thus in original]. I'd dave thought everyone knew that. --Wetman 21:30, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
The fact that not everyone knows that I think is reason enough for it to be avoided. Nohat 03:00, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree mostly with Nohat. AFAIK "sic" shouldn't be used to indicate spelling errors, instead it should point out cases which seem like misspellings, but aren't, or otherwise purposeFUL strange spelling. Not for trivial mistakes which are meaningless. "sic" means "thus" and I have a slight preference for "[sic]" or "[thus]" over "(sic)", since "(" and ")" are already used for clarification: He and his mubacher (a kind of dog) went for a walk. --MarSch 12:28, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
My view is that what is appropriate depends on the quote. So if you are quoting on English usage, or to demonstrate a point where there is some element of debate on right or wrong, then not correcting and highlighting this can be appropriate (if only to stop someone else blindly correcting). Using [sic] is a well-known convention (the point of some of these conventions only dawn over time) and it is easy enough for a reader, intrigued at this annotation, to find out about it. My view on the general case is that it does not require identical spelling to be a correct quote. You should be wary of changing words (e.g. "You should be careful of changing words") as you may change the subtleties of meaning - a good example of this is the technical difference between should and must, where should can be taken to mean must, but in law it infers a strong preference as opposed to an absolute requirement. Quoting Churchill, one would be very wary of changing anything - as the way that he said things was considered part of the point, but cleaning up some dodgy English from another website should be fair game if the point of the quote is purely the content.
The other advantage of [sic] as a convention is that it is clearly understood not to be part of the quote when used in situ (sigh, there goes another one) whereas use of English anotation has to be distinguished further, or risks being sucked into the quote. e.g. "blak is white" (as written) - soon becomes a cause for concern, what is the concern over: the annotation or the spelling? Using "blak[sic] is white" becomes clear that the only issue is the poor spelling not the contentious nature of the statement.
In the end it is a readability issue, it should fairly obvious when a change is uncontentious. In other words, the acid test should be - "Is this of relevance to the reader in the context of the article?" If it is not, then clean it up in a way that minimises the impact of the correction. Spenny 15:00, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Just to maybe try to move this forward a little, after being away for a while I think I've clarified my thoughts. This isn't a proposal, but I'm curious what people think about this as a framework for moving the discussion forward:

  1. Quotes should generally not be "corrected". We aren't the world's spell checkers or grammar checkers, we merely report what people say/write. An exception would be if the source we are relying on made a mistake in its quoting of the item (i.e. a newspaper misspells something someone says in an interview; see the Terri Shiavo example above.)
  2. If we do correct or change a quote (obvious typo, for example) then the correction should go in brackets. Frankly, any editor's addition or change within a quote should be in brackets, since parenthesis have other grammatical uses that might be confusing.
  3. We should explicitly note for readers where an apparent error is in the original. Its not enough to note it in comments for editors. Readers should have the information to know if an apparent error is ours or in the original, especially since sometimes an apparent error is not actually an error -- the vernacular used in Tom Sawyer comes to mind.
  4. We should figure out something besides [sic], since we generally have a policy to not use latin jargon, and there's no reason this should be an exception to that policy. Footnotes are extremely useful for providing meta-data such as this.
  5. Finally, there certainly seems to be consensus that pointing out misspellings or other errors should never be used as a method for people to slip POV into wikipedia.

Chuck 22:24, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree with all of the above except your number 4. i think [sic] is the perfect thing to use for this, and i plan to continue to use it. Those who hate it could use [thus in original] or some varient, but I don't expect ever to type that. DES (talk) 22:42, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I also agree with all but number 4. This is a a wiki, we have the perfect opportunity to wikify the (sic) and provide instant enlightenment. Hiding talk 18:15, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Same argument could be used for any other latin jargon that, by consensus, we have decided not to use. I've got no problem with [sic] personally, I'm just looking for the result which doesn't require either adding contradictory guidance to the MoS or having to go back and revisit the latin jargon guidance. Also, because I was arguing that any addition to quotes should go in square brackets, wikifying [sic] could be clumsy. Its not immediately clear to me, for example, how one would wikify it and put it in square brackets. Finally, if I saw (sic) in an article, I would click it expecting to get further information on that specific quote, that might provide explanation as to why [sic] was necessary. I'd be surprised to merely reach the general sic page. Chuck 19:19, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
". . .wikifying [sic] could be clumsy. Its not immediately clear to me, for example, how one would wikify it and put it in square brackets." FYI, [[sic|[''sic'']]] = [sic] —Wayward 09:35, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
  • You might guess I am anti-number 4. I don't think it is Latin jargon per se[sic], it is a mechanism for swiftly highlighting a deliberate wording. The alternatives are cumbersome. There is a great danger of dumbing down. Should we ban the semi-colon as its use is not well understood; should we consider that the colon redundant, too? I do not agree with sic linking: it goes against the over-linking rules in my book.I'm happy about the other points as long as it is clear that they are guides not rules (which I don't think there should be an issue over). There are times when it is just too distracting to get concerned over irrelevant detail - and that has to be the key test, does it add to understanding and readability to highlight a minor typographical correction? Spenny 20:04, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

On a related note, how about depicting intentionally misspelled or abnormally used terms? The example I'm thinking of right now pertains to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which Bobby Henderson's creation myth claims created a "midgit". Because this perceived misspelling is unintentional, standard English style seems to dictate putting it in quotes (or using [sic], which in this case I think is best avoided), much as would be done if using a word in an unconventional or unusual manner.—chris.lawson (talk) 06:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I have never seen it written anyway but [sic] or [<em>sic</em>]. But, I don't believe it has a place in the Wikipedia. Editors of periodicals use it to show they know there is an error, but it is not their fault (not implicitly, but that's the general idea behind it). But in an encyclopedia it doesn't have a purpose. If there is an error in the text, it should be corrected. If it is a quote from a written source, it should remain true to the original source material. If it is from an oral transcription, it should be corrected in spelling, but not in grammar. [sic] is unnecessary in the encyclopedia because it doesn't add to the content. If you look at other encyclopedias, there is no [sic] in them at all. Not in Britanica, Encarta, encyclopedia.com, et al.glocks out 18:29, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Repeated Links

A question on style which I couldn't find. In an article like The Ashes you will see a mix of Australia and Australia. What is the convention? Personal opinion is that repeated links affect readability, though on a long page, the convention of first link only may be inappropriate. Not looking for hard and fast rule, but a guide here. Spenny 12:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, forget it, found the guide. Not easy to find, hidden on the link when it is a major topic, and perhaps there should be a stub paragraph which refers to the main links page. Spenny 14:30, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Time references, both hard and soft

All time references should include either a direct reference to either the time actually referenced or a direct reference to the time from which the relative time reference is made. Soft time references ("soon", "recent past", "a little while") should try to be avoided due to the ambiguity of the time referenced. If a soft time reference cannot be avoided, the time referenced from ("soon" from what time point?). For example, "now" should always be referenced to the time written, if that is what is intended.

To simplify the reading of the articles, it's possible that the time references can remain soft or ambiguous, but they should (must?) include a hard reference within the "meta data" such that the time referenced or the time relative anchor is shown as a rollover in a normal web browser.

The article that prompted this suggestion is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EM64T where it references "soon" with no "time anchor".

My apologies if this is in the wrong location: this is my first ever post to wikipedia. GSmith 21:16, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

This is a good idea, IMO. Instead of "now" I generally say something like "as of 2005" or "as of September 2005". Of course, the page history provides metadata so one can always determnine when a "soon" was put in, but in a frequently edited page that can becoem quite tedious to uncover.
I think this discussion would be better at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style with the goal of putting this guideline into the MoS evnetually. DES (talk) 20:31, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I copied the above from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) becauze I think it belongs here. DES (talk) 21:45, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd agree that soft time references can be a problem and should be avoided where possible. Where it's not possible, context is vital. Another related word which can cause problems and always needs to be placed with unambiguous context is "contemporary", with its shift in meaning from "at the same time" to "modern". Grutness...wha? 01:11, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

And one step better than "as of 2005" is "as of 2005". -- Jmabel | Talk 00:59, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Linking years seems to be a common cause of overlinking. Unless there is a strong context in the article that means that the year is highly relevant (historical impact) then it is unlikely to be appropriate to link to the year (and therefore should not be used as a technique to give the edit a time context as this technical use would not be distinguished by the reader).
This would be especially true of a comment that says words to the effect of "at the time of editing" where there is little link between the time of editing and the subject of the article, except to indicate that the article might become out of date. For example, discussing the latest Volkswagen Golf model might have a discussion of the current model, but is it then helpful to find out what else has been going on in 2005? Perhaps the test is that if you are doing a list of 2005 happenings, would this article be of interest? So hurricanes in 2005 might deserve a link due to notable events at the same time, whereas the latest Creative Labs MP3 player would not be worthy. Of course, the user is always able to conduct their own searches. Spenny 11:11, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
As I understand it, though, there are people who work off of the backlinks of the as of... pages to look for what can be updated. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:04, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Understood, my view on that is that it makes me uncomfortable subverting the use of a feature for another use. I'm not up on the wikibilities, but if this is the case it would be better to have a revision marker that was not a link to allow someone to scan for it. So, is it good style to present to the reader markup that is not for their benefit? Spenny 07:47, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Isn't this whole idea pretty non-controversial. I'd be pretty surprised to see an edit war where one person wrote "recently" and someone changed it to "early 2005" and the first guy wanted it changed back. Even if that does happen, I think it would be pretty hard to support using the more vague time, regardless of whether the Manual of Style includes an entry on the topic.Chuck 16:11, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Is "like shown" correct?

From the Use of punctuation in the presence of brackets section:

This means that bracketed clauses at the end of sentences do not include a full stop (like shown here).

The phrase "like shown here" is one I've never encountered before, and for reasons I can't quite articulate, not being sufficiently expert in grammar, it feels wrong.

I'd be inclined to use "as shown here". Is "like shown" considered incorrect, or is it just a particulary uncommon usage? Direvus 17:11, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Winston tastes good...? I think it's worth changing. –Hajor 17:41, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Like is a preposition and can be used to introduce a prepositional phrase. Like is not used to introduce a clause. Therefore, "as shown here" (an elliptical clause) is correct. —Wayward 04:49, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Like can also be used as a conjunction to introduce a clause. [1]. Nohat 05:28, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
What's intended, I surmise, is a reference to an illustration that's, like, shown. Another form is simply (illustration) or (illustrated). Or even (illustrated above right)— for those articles where the illustrations are balanced, not lined up like matchheads in a matchbook. --Wetman 01:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
From Nohat's link (Merriam-Webster):

While the present objection to [like's conjunctive use] is perhaps more heated than rational, someone writing in a formal prose style may well prefer to use as, as if, such as, or an entirely different construction instead.

So there you have it. Your notion of correctness is better described as a notion of proper formal usage.