don't overuse [sic]

Here's an extract from an article about controversial "male feminist" Hugo Schwyzer (about whom I know nothing). The article quotes one of Schwyzer's tweets from during an infamous online meltdown. Note the "[sic]" at the end.

The 100-odd Twitter rant included such gems as: “I f****ed porn stars I met through my class”, “I cheated on my wife and pretended to be reformed”, and “I wrote an article in the Atlantic condemning age-disparate relationships the same week that I was sleeping with a 32-year-old. And sexting a 27-year-old”. And one more: “You can denounce me now, I’m out of feminism, not because I don’t believe in it, but because I’m such a p***poor [sic] example of it.”

Why was the "[sic]" there? Sic is Latin for "yes" or "It is so." In modern English, as an editorial comment, we place a "[sic]" after a locution we believe to be mistaken as a way of distancing ourselves from the author we're quoting. Sic is a way of saying, "Yeah... he really said that," or "Yup; he really spelled it that way. Not my fault; I'm just quoting."

I see nothing wrong with what Schwyzer wrote. The number of asterisks corresponds to the number of missing letters* ("-iss," in this case); even during his meltdown, the man was attempting to shield the reader from uncouth language. If anything is the matter, it's that there should have been a hyphen: the original, correct phrasal adjective is "piss-poor," so perhaps Schwyzer should have written "p***-poor." But was the absence of the hyphen enough justification for the "[sic]"? I wonder. If the person who wrote "[sic]" was, in fact, focused on the hyphen, then this was some super-sharp editing (which nevertheless failed to catch Schwyzer's comma splice in that same sentence). But if the "[sic]" was placed there for some other reason, that would amount to poor editing.

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*The same can't be said for Schwyzer's "f****ed."


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