 | This is a documentation subpage for Template:Sic. It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page. |
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 | This template should not be used in citation templates such as Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2, because it includes markup that will pollute the COinS metadata they produce; see Wikipedia:COinS. |
You can use this template to easily insert a "[sic]" notation. This notation is placed after a point in a quotation that, in both the original text and its quotation in an article, contains either an actual textual error or text that appears to be an error—the problematic text must have been faithfully reproduced as it appears in the original source for using sic to be correct. This usage clarifies the source of text that might otherwise be taken as an error of transcription.
However, it isn't always the best idea to recreate a quote perfectly. Note that MOS:SIC says that "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected."
- By default, this template links to the article Sic for the benefit of readers, but this default is disabled if the
|nolink=yparameter is added. This is necessary in some contexts where the link wikitext would interfere with the correct interpretation of the surrounding wikitext. These are some examples of places a call to the {{sic}} template will break the formatting unless it has|nolink=y:- Within the displayed anchor text (right-hand visible portion) of an internal link (aka a wikilink) or external link
- In the value of a parameter of a ref tag
- Linking to the Sic article may be undesirable in certain other cases, for example when the template is used many times close together.
- Additional unnamed parameters can be used to obfuscate spelling errors in quoted material in the wiki-text of a page, to help prevent automated or semi-automated correction by bot or human editors, which (although done in good faith) would be undesirable. In these cases, split the intentionally misspelled word or other character string into two parts and use them as the first two parameters of the template, and replace the original with the template:
He said "{{sic|Irrega|rdless}} …"will display as:
- He said "Irregardless [sic] …"
- The template can be used with a
|?question mark parameter to mark situations where whether an apparent error is copied from the source cannot readily be determined. If this feature is used in conjunction with the obfuscation feature above,|?must come first:He said "{{sic|?|Irrega|rdless}} …"Examples of use cases:- The quoted source might not be available online, or not without a paid subscription, etc.
- A quoted passage contains a spelling error but is ambiguous as to whether the statement was originally printed this way (in which case [sic] may be appropriate), or spoken aloud (in which case the typo should be corrected).
… his April 1992 interview with the Dolly Llama {{sic}} …- yields:
- … his April 1992 interview with the Dolly Llama [sic] …
- yields:
… spokesperson stated that "rescue efforts have been suspnded {{sic|?}} until further notice" …- yields:
- … spokesperson stated that "rescue efforts have been suspnded [sic?] until further notice" …
- This is used because the context does not make it clear whether the spelling error was made by the spokesperson (in a written statement), or by a reporter (listening to the spokesperson speak).
- yields: