Template talk:Sic

New Features

Clearly, just having "sic" appear next to a word isn't enough to convince our readers that a misspelling is intentionally being preserved. Nor is having a link to an explanation, or hover text requesting that the text not be edited. So I've tried editing this template yet again. My latest idea is to include the correct spelling in the sic tag -- to perhaps make it clear that we do know what the correct spelling of the word is. I've only implemented in one place so far, namely at Oblivion:Cuirass of the Cameleon. I'm not sure whether it's too much... or whether something that blatant is what's needed. What do others think? Should the correct spelling be displayed on the page, in the hover text, or (as is currently done) in both places? --Nephele^Talk 23:53, 15 July 2008 (EDT)

OK, I added one more example, at Oblivion:The Renegade Shadowscale#Journal Entries. The Cameleon case isn't a great example, because the linkable entry means that the sic tag can't actually incorporate the misspelled word. The example on Renegade Shadowscale is more representative of how the tag is supposed to work, including how it looks when you edit the page and see the two words side by side. --Nephele^Talk 00:07, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

I don't know, I think it may be overdoing it, and in the case of the Cuirass of the Cameleon, it adds a significant amount of width to the column - which still fits in this case, but I can think of other tables where that would be a real problem. Would it help if we tried putting in <!--DO NOT CORRECT THIS SPELLING ERROR WHICH IS SEEN IN-GAME--> type comments into the code on the pages? Only problem is that can't be done as part of the template (because the code wouldn't appear on the page, only in the template, unless you forced it to #subst: somehow, but I don't know how you'd manage that), so it would have to be added separately - perhaps a bot could do that by seeking out all pages where the {{sic}} template is used? --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 01:00, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

Yes, the new parameter is overdoing it, but unfortunately it's clearly necessary given the propensity of our dear readers to ignore the current setup. I'd leave the correct text on the page because I don't think most people read the hover text. As for the comment idea, let's leave it on hold until we can see how this works. Apart from anything else, even that idea hasn't worked on other pages. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 01:15, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

Of course, if they're ignoring sic tags and ignoring hover text and ignoring all-caps in-code comments, odds are they're going to ignore this as well, and nothing short of adding protect tags around the word in question will prevent them from making these "corrections". (Note that I am NOT advocating the use of protect tags for this sort of thing - that would definitely be overkill, and contrary to the spirit of wiki anyhow.) I suppose as yet another precaution we could put an * with the tag, and add footnotes below the section indicating that this spelling is seen in-game, though odds are some people would ignore that as well. Oy, what can you do? --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 01:33, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

I propose to revert the template back to just the word "sic" with some additional hover text. Why? The reasons given above should clarify that the current display is too expansive, and detracts from the actual text the Sic tag is usually placed in. I don't think that the latest change has helped in reducing the amount of mistaken spelling corrections, unfortunately. Perhaps it's because those editors are deliberately doing it, or they are really blind.
I fear we have to admit that we just have to revert such spelling corrections every once in a while. This template has seen quite some improvements on clarifying to editors why we preserve spelling errors in quotations, and none seemed to have really helped. --Timenn < talk > 04:45, 24 October 2008 (EDT)

I agree that the large display is intrusive, but I would have to say that it has worked in keeping down the number of incorrect "fixes". I'd be inclined to keep it like this for now. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 09:35, 24 October 2008 (EDT)

I've gone ahead and removed the addition superscript part of the template as it was obstructing the flow of reading. I kept the 2 parameter, so the correct spelling will still be within the hovering text. --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 19:20, 6 June 2009 (EDT)

Rpeh, we decided to delete it due to the obstruction it causes when larger words/phrases are used. We (Myself, Krusty, and Stormscape) feel that a sic tag should be enough for most people to understand. Albeit, not everyone will, but that can be said of anything. However, if you truly wish to keep it, I have no major issues with that. --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 09:30, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Can you give me a link to the discussion please? –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 10:35, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Err... that might be a problem. We had an "unofficial"" discussion in the IRC. I have transcripts, but no, there was no formal discussion within the wiki. Careless of me, but I figured the edit wouldn't be that drastic. --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 10:39, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

I refer the honorable gentleman to this para in the IRC guidelines.

In this case, the reason why Nephele added the second parameter was precisely because the tag on its own was not stopping people from changing things back. Even with the extra parameter, some people still don't leave things alone but such edits happen far less frequently. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 10:46, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

(outdent) That is fine. But where does one draw the line between editing carefree and consensus? Controversy? Controversy is subjective in my opinion (irony). Like I said, I am fine with keeping it, but I just thought it disrupted the pages. If I ever come across it to bedisturbing again, I will return to this page :) --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 10:52, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

You can also remove the parameter from the Template call in the specific case it does disrupt the page. --Timenn < talk > 14:18, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Return to an argument

As seen above, there has been some mild controversy over the layout of this template. I propose to change from this:

Ambroise Canne is a Breton viticulturist in the employ of the Surilie Brothers in Skingrad. He sleeps in his house in the southwest corner of Skingrad between midnight and 6am before heading to the Great Chapel of Julianos where he prays to Dibella for two hours. If the weather is dry, he will head to the yard behind the Surilie Brothers' house and stand there between 8am and 1pm and also from 3pm until 8pm; otherwise, he will head home and wander around his house. Between 1pm and 3pm he eats lunch at his current location, although since he has no food on his person he will only eat at work if somebody provides him with food. The same applies during his dinner break between 8pm and 10pm. Between 10pm and midnight he will wander around his house before heading to bed. He will not offer any training while praying, eating, sleeping or working in the vineyard, so on non-rainy days, the only time he will train you is when he wanders around his house between 10pm and midnight - which makes rainy days the best bet for training, as long as you don't catch him during any of his meals or when he is sleeping. Ambroise wears a lower-class outfit consisting of huntsman leather pants, a coarse linen shirt, and oiled linen shoes, along with a leather shield and steel longsword. He also carries his key, a tiny amount of gold, and a rake and hoe that will respawn if stolen. Ambroise's home is a typical lower-class house. An iron shortsword can be found on a shelf with a fur shield and there is a decent quantity of ingredients in various bowls and on tables, along with the odd book. Four bottles of Surilie Brothers Wine can be found in the wine rack, but it is a bottle of Tamika's West Weald Wine that he has on his dinner table, a fact that might not please his employers. There are also 3 stone bricks found to the right of the front door as you enter. The first time he meets you he will announce "I am Ambroise Canne, grape-grower for Surilie Brothers. I'm also an advanced trainer for weapon and shield parries." Ambroise is a little smug regarding his ability compared to the Fighters Guild trainer in block and will say "Fadus Calidus [sic] at the Fighters Guild also teaches Block, but he'd be the first to admit I'm his superior in every way." As an advanced trainer, he is one of two NPCs that will start the quest for Block Master Training, the other being Lum gro-Baroth in Chorrol. Once your Block skill reaches 70, speak to him and pick the training option which will trigger the quest and this dialogue: "You want more training? Then you'll have to find Andragil. I learned most of what I know from her. I think she's living in Bravil these days. You should look for her there." The people of Skingrad concur and will announce that "Ambroise Canne is really good with his shield. Even better than Falus Calidus [sic], I think." and "I learned quite a bit about how to use a shield from Ambrose [sic] Canne. Cost me a bit, but it was worth it."

to this:

Ambroise Canne is a Breton viticulturist in the employ of the Surilie Brothers in Skingrad. He sleeps in his house in the southwest corner of Skingrad between midnight and 6am before heading to the Great Chapel of Julianos where he prays to Dibella for two hours. If the weather is dry, he will head to the yard behind the Surilie Brothers' house and stand there between 8am and 1pm and also from 3pm until 8pm; otherwise, he will head home and wander around his house. Between 1pm and 3pm he eats lunch at his current location, although since he has no food on his person he will only eat at work if somebody provides him with food. The same applies during his dinner break between 8pm and 10pm. Between 10pm and midnight he will wander around his house before heading to bed. He will not offer any training while praying, eating, sleeping or working in the vineyard, so on non-rainy days, the only time he will train you is when he wanders around his house between 10pm and midnight - which makes rainy days the best bet for training, as long as you don't catch him during any of his meals or when he is sleeping. Ambroise wears a lower-class outfit consisting of huntsman leather pants, a coarse linen shirt, and oiled linen shoes, along with a leather shield and steel longsword. He also carries his key, a tiny amount of gold, and a rake and hoe that will respawn if stolen. Ambroise's home is a typical lower-class house. An iron shortsword can be found on a shelf with a fur shield and there is a decent quantity of ingredients in various bowls and on tables, along with the odd book. Four bottles of Surilie Brothers Wine can be found in the wine rack, but it is a bottle of Tamika's West Weald Wine that he has on his dinner table, a fact that might not please his employers. There are also 3 stone bricks found to the right of the front door as you enter. The first time he meets you he will announce "I am Ambroise Canne, grape-grower for Surilie Brothers. I'm also an advanced trainer for weapon and shield parries." Ambroise is a little smug regarding his ability compared to the Fighters Guild trainer in block and will say "[redacted] at the Fighters Guild also teaches Block, but he'd be the first to admit I'm his superior in every way." As an advanced trainer, he is one of two NPCs that will start the quest for Block Master Training, the other being Lum gro-Baroth in Chorrol. Once your Block skill reaches 70, speak to him and pick the training option which will trigger the quest and this dialogue: "You want more training? Then you'll have to find Andragil. I learned most of what I know from her. I think she's living in Bravil these days. You should look for her there." The people of Skingrad concur and will announce that "Ambroise Canne is really good with his shield. Even better than [redacted], I think." and "I learned quite a bit about how to use a shield from [redacted] Canne. Cost me a bit, but it was worth it."

Frankly, the second parameter has not reduced the number of removals, so I think we can get rid of the hideous line breaking now. Thoughts? –Elliot ^talk 23:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I have hated the "old" sic-tags from day one (the line spacing issue makes the pages look TERRIBLE), so I wholeheartedly support this change. A ton of pages will look much better, no doubt. What could be discussed is whether to keep the correct spelling or not - I wasn't around when it wasn't included, so I don't know exactly how many changes people did to the pages when it only displayed a sic-tag. Nevertheless, I'd prefer a good layout any day of the week. --Krusty 00:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

While it can be extremely annoying when people remove the sic tags, I don't think it happens frequently enough to warrant a markup as extreme as the one we have. As Elliot has shown in the above example, even one of these tags on a page can mess with line spacing, and frankly it's quite distracting. If nothing else I'm definitely in favor of removing the superscript to fix this issue.

While we're at it, though I'd really like to see the alternate spelling removed from the tag. If we feel it's important to indicate what the spelling should have been, we can include it in an invisible note that people will see when they try to edit the page. No, this won't stop everyone from removing the tag, but it's better than nothing. As it stands, these tags are really disruptive to the flow of the page. Making the page harder to read isn't exactly a good thing! What do other people think? –Eshe^talk 00:25, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for the change. To the best of my knowledge (which I'll admit, isn't great) most publications just use "sic", rather than adding the correct spelling as well. Dlarsh^{(Talk,Contribs,E-mail)} 00:59, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Additional proposal

Further to the discussion above (which I completely missed), would adding the correct spelling to the hover text, like {{Hover}}, be a useful addition? Perhaps even including a simple "do not correct" sort of text with it? I doubt it'll seriously address the issue of people changing the {{sic}} tags, but it could be useful for the rare case when you can't figure out what a word should've been. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 09:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

If you look closely, you will see that it is already there: Hapy [sic]. –Elliot ^talk 14:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

D'oh! I only hovered over "sic" itself last time I checked...never occurred to me to hover over the word. Of course, that in itself brings up a possible change. :) —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 03:37, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, as much as I like leaving out the original spelling in favor of this new system, it seems that we have had several unnecessary edits to the pages already. Since these edits are clogging up the page's Edit History, I think we should consider mentioning the correct spelling like we used to do - just without the line spacing mess-up. -- Krusty 10:19, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean RH...? You can hover over both. And there will always be people who don't understand the concept of [sic], and there is nothing we can truly do about besides to just revert their edit. Why people go out of their way to remove it is just a mystery to me as the next person. And in that case, with the only reason to have the line breaking wording is to use it as a deterrent, I think we should avoid. Because the number of edits will not change that much. –Elliot ^talk 13:16, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I think we should look at this issue for a few more weeks to see if the amount of edits increases drastically or not. If it starts to become a regular habit again, I fear we need to return to the old format. --Timenn-<talk> 13:39, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, but people remove it regardless of what it says. People just don't know what [sic] is intended to do. I don't think saying that there is an increase would provide any substantial evidence that removing the word was the cause (maybe some more people who don't know just showed up). But, I also want to mention that it would be bad style on our part, since the correct way to use it is [sic] and another way. –Elliot ^talk 13:42, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

\=> That's why I want to look at it for a few more weeks. If patrollers make a note of a sic edit when they revert it, we can at least plot something that may point to the change as being the cause. --Timenn-<talk> 13:50, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

In regards to Elliot's question above, when I hover over the word or the square brackets around the "sic", I get the correct spelling; when I hover over "sic" itself, I get "UESPWiki:Spelling" both in Firefox and IE8. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 05:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

That is because you are hovering over the link part of the sic tag. –Elliot ^talk 14:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I could figure the "why" of it, but it's natural to hover over a link and not really think of hovering over the word. Dunno if we'd be able to change that functionality, but if we can, I'd say it's something to consider...I don't see a link to Spelling as particularly useful on a sic tag, which is all about misspelling. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 02:15, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Description Language

Can we alter the template to make it easier to note a factual error? As seen here and here, {{Sic}} is sometimes being used to correct factual errors. But as can be seen in the opening paragraph here, trying to elaborate on such a mistake using the description parameter is a little tricky. So can we change that a bit, or perhaps simply change "misspelling" to "mistake" in the standard Sic description? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 20:13, 25 September 2012 (GMT)

I just tweaked the sic tag on that page, but I do think there should be some easier/different ways to use this template. I can't think of them at the moment, but I know I've come across other ways sic tags are used which could be improved for different situations. — ABCface^◥ 20:18, 25 September 2012 (GMT)

in Redguard "you've had plenty of practise" marked sic

this is correct usage of the word

/"However "practise" is correctly used in this instance it is just not familiar to most Americans. I believe it is only considered an error by the American standard of spelling. Canada and the rest of the commonwealth use the standard U.K. spelling in which practise is the correct spelling for a verb and practice the correct usage for a noun."/ — Unsigned comment by Auburniowa (talk • contribs) at 04:35 on 13 March 2014

This site uses American spellings, so the word is in fact correctly considered misspelt. The spelling being correct in other countries is totally irrelevant. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 04:44, 13 March 2014 (GMT)

Breaks when used in template parameter

This template has a major weakness in that it does not work when used in the text of a parameter in another template. I suspect it's those "nowiki" tags that are failing as we end up with a triple-[] around the links - see File:ON-hairstyle-Fine Upstanding Spines.jpg for example. It might work better to replace those [] with pure ASCII codes for those characters? Needs testing. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 17:17, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

That change just makes sense all around, so I've gone ahead and done it. And at least in a quick test, it appears to work correctly in template parameters now. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 18:51, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Cool, I was considering that myself, but in the middle of another major edit and wasn't sure that was the proper solution. Thanks. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 19:47, 2 November 2017 (UTC)