Today I decided to purchase 'The Big Issue', I don't normally do this, but the lady who was selling it always smiles when I walk past, and today I actually had the money in my pocket, so I decided to purchase the magazine. Inside I found an article called 'War of the Words' about writers who have had public disagreements with each other, my favourite in the article was when Tibor Fischer said of Martin Amis' book 'Yellow Dog', "[It] isn't bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing. It's not-knowing-where-to-look bad . . . It's like your favourite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating." To which Amis' reply was, "Tibor Fischer is a creep and a wretch, Oh yeah, and a fat-arse." In terms of literary thought put into those two insults, I think it is fairly even!
Now although this is not what I learnt from the article, it is funny, and I love a good insult. I didn't in fact learn anything from the article, but it did spur me on to today's learning. It contained a quote from somebody else in the article, which had sic written, in brackets, in the middle of the quote. I have often seen this in articles and I have never known what it means. I always assumed it to be some literary term and because I am only a lowly blogger, not a literary writer, I would not be familiar with such amazing literary terms, although I think I could come up with a better insult than Martin Amis. I eventually turned to my good friend Dictionary.com, who revealed to me that sic means, thus or such. It is usually used in a sentence when quoting somebody, as it was in the article in 'The Big Issue', to denote that a mistake that is made, is not an error made by the writer of the article, but an error made by the person from whom the quote was originally taken. Armed with this new fact, I think I am now ready to go from my blogging into the world of literary writing, who am I kidding, I will just keep blogging!
Check out the meaning of sic and other meanings on Dictionary.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment