What can I do instead of [sic]?

Question

I have a quote that has a misplaced "to":

... they will put you to back to sleep ...

It seems like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can either:

• Just delete the mistaken "to" (then I would be deliberately misquoting them)
• Put [sic] next to it (which looks unbelievably pedantic, especially since they write better than I do)

Is there a way around this?

Answer 1

In its section on Quotations and Dialogue: Permissible changes to punctuation, capitalization, and spelling, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends:

Obvious typographic errors may be corrected silently (without comment or sic; see 13.59), unless the passage quoted is from an older work or a manuscript source where idiosyncrasies of spelling are generally preserved. If spelling and punctuation are modernized or altered for clarity, readers must be so informed in a note, in a preface, or elsewhere.

The choice is yours: make the correction and move on, or correct the text and flag it with a footnote[1].

However, the example you cite apparently isn't from an ancient manuscript, and your correction isn't modernizing it or altering it for clarity, so I would simply make the correction without comment.

[1] Like this one.

Answer 2

Depending on the context, you could also:

• paraphrase the quote (still source it, but don't put quotes) (e.g. The author contends they will put you back to sleep)

• make your own edits inside the quote (e.g. "they will put you ... back to sleep")

• just ignore it (e.g. "they will put you back to sleep[1]") and make the clarification in the footnote

Answer 3

If the error isn't relevant to the topic at hand, I don't think there's any harm in silently correcting it. Footnoting it just to say "there was a typo in the original" seems twice as intrusive as "[sic]".