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Suppose I am a reporter quoting someone, or an editor for someone's article. The original speaker/writer has made a mistake and I want to correct it in the edited version (while still being true to the original). What are standard ways to do that?

That's kind of a reverse "sic" - I use sic when I want to keep the mistake intact, what should I use when I don't?

I thought about using S/B for "should be", e.g. "What a beautiful green (S/B blue) sky", but I'm not sure this will be widely understood.

I also know of a practice of specifying the editor's initials, e.g. "What a beautiful green (blue. MR) sky", but in my context people aren't necessarily supposed to know the editor's name.

Laurel
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Meni Rosenfeld
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  • You could use your second suggestions and not put the initials of the editor but just editor's note. E.g. "What a beautiful green (blue. editor's note) sky" – jera Feb 16 '16 at 12:35
  • @jera Thanks. But I'm looking for something more compact. – Meni Rosenfeld Feb 16 '16 at 12:56
  • Is it necessary that you alert the reader to the original text (green, in the example)? If so, I can't help thinking you should include significantly more text (additional sentence or footnote) explaining why you've made the change, but that would be a fairly unusual situation. If you don't need that, just enclose your revision in square brackets: What a beautiful [blue] sky! – FumbleFingers Feb 16 '16 at 13:21
  • @FumbleFingers: In a way, yes. The exact situation I have is slightly more complicated than I described, but to make a long story short I strongly prefer that 1. The original word appears. 2. The correction appears. 3. It is clear that it is a correction. 4. This is done as concisely as possible. I might consider your suggestion if no better alternative is found, though. – Meni Rosenfeld Feb 16 '16 at 23:36
  • Traditionally, in newspapers, editors used a blue pencil to correct mistakes. Nowadays, editing articles is done electronically so scribbling is made redundant. The only vestige of this I can think of is Private Eye's fake corrections used for comedic effect, which take the form of Shurely this is wrong Ed. etc. (Shurely is alluding to editors' habit for a liquid lunch) Private Eye is a very traditional paper in many ways and was born to satire newspapers, as such, their "Ed." notes are probably historically accurate. – BladorthinTheGrey Dec 02 '16 at 23:15
  • @BladorthinTheGrey I think you'll find that this was one of the Eye's regular jibes, more accurately framed as, "Shurely some mistake, Ed". Moreover, it was a mimic-in-print of Bill Deedes, onetime editor of the Daily Telegraph and an indefatigable TV-pundit, who pronounced "surely" as "shurely", a sort of Churchillian way of pronouncing words. – Peter Point Dec 03 '16 at 06:36

1 Answers1

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According to Wikipedia, you would use sic. For your correction you would use recte:

Alternatively, when both the original and the suggested correction are desired to be shown, one may give the actual form, followed by sic in brackets, followed by the corrected form, preceded by recte, in brackets. The word recte is a Latin adverb meaning "rightly".

An Iraqi battalion has consumed [sic] [recte assumed] control of the former American military base, and our forces are now about 40 minutes outside the city.

The format may change depending on what style you follow. For example:

He was married to Ida Stigman at Emmetsburg, Iowa in 1905 [sic, recte 1906]. She passed away in 1919 [sic, recte 1918]. He was married to Ida Rosental [sic, recte Rosenthal] in 1924 [sic, recte 1922]. She passed away in 1932 [sic, recte 1930]. He then married Mary Perry at Fairmont, Minnesota on September 15, 1935. She passed away in 1960 [sic, recte 1958].

Obituary for William C. Schutt

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