[sic]

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When I am reading something that has "[sic]" in the paragraph I am kinda annoyed. From my understanding, it's used when a writer is direct quoting someone and notices that there is something wrong (grammatically?) with what was quoted. Basically, it's a signal to the reader that the writer knows that something is wrong with what was quoted. Sometimes, I see a grammatical error and most of the time I don't. I feel like the writer should let me in on what's wrong, maybe a little asterisk with an explanation on the bottom of the page would be helpful.

Anyone else annoyed about this?

It's usually to do with directly-quoted spelling errors, at least when it's used "properley" (sic).

Spelling errors are all I've seen it used for.

I wish it was also used for grammatical errors though. Then more people would learn that apostrophes aren't for pluralization. Instead, we have major network TV shows with apostrophes wrongly used in the title, and half the poplulation repeating the mistake in their own writing.

I always interpreted it as [spelling incorrect]

that's probably not exactly what it means, but yeah it's definitely in reference to spelling errors.

Sic is a Latin word meaning "thus", "so", "as such", or "in such a manner". In writing, it is placed within square brackets and usually italicized – [sic] – to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, punctuation, and/or other preceding quoted material has been reproduced verbatim from the quoted original and is not a transcription error.[1]

It had a long vowel in Latin (sīc), meaning that it was pronounced like the English word "seek" (IPA /'sik/); however, it is normally anglicised to /'sɪk/ (like the English word "sick").

-- Wiki

I always read it as 'spelling in [original] copy', but yours is more succinct. I remember looking up the actual latin translation years ago, but all my brain kept over the long haul was the general concept.

Part of me can't see why they bother putting it for quoted writing. If I saw a mistake in a quote, I would assume it was the original quote that had a mistake, not the writer of the book. On the other hand, most people probably wouldn't think about this and so authors would end up with tons of letters entitled:

'spelling errors on pages 4, 17, 90, 140 etc... '

even though it was not them who did it!

Still bugs me though...