I have a quote at the beginning of my thesis.

I have to have it - it sums up the whole issue very well, but it has a grammatical error (according to my mum lol) so do I correct it or not - its going to be in the starting paragraph so a little bit concerned. it is (well along the lines of)

"THe world is like an iceberg where there are a small amount* of penguins on the surface, but many more down below, swimming in the sea, dodging polar bears"

*my mum reckons this should be 'number'

Leave the quote as is.

Prob best to keep it as is. Though I guess you could use (sic) but it's not the best start to a thesis to be pointing out errors in someone else's grammar!

no, especially as stereotyping is a big part of my thesis and to point out this person might not be grammatically correct, kinda looks like I'm doing some stereotyping myself.

I'll keep it as is. Thank you!

Definitely keep it as it is - it's a quote.

Your mum is right! But I wouldn't change a quote unless you can get away with only quoting a bit of it and putting the rest in square brackets in some way.

I wouldn't dispute that Sneaks mum is right but a quote is a quote and should be quoted as a quote! It's wrong to do anything else, even if aspects of the quote are 'wrong'. Really this is cut and dried and there should be no debate about the right or wrong way to quote this quote. Phew......................................:p

I am adding my query on here as it is similar. I want to quote someone who uses "it's" wrongly instead of "its" - I know it's a quote but it looks like I don't know the difference - and writing "sic" looks a bit school marmish....

I add my question too. I have to use the quote that has a spelling mistake two times in same word. If I use without correcting, it looks strange and there is no meaning of the word even though it can understandable. Pls suggest !

Hi swetchha

How about "this quote is understandabubbleawobble [understandable] despite the typing mistakes"? This approach is fairly standard, I think.

P.

Hi Timefortea, unless it was originally a written quote, I don't think that it's vs. its matters as far as what you write. It could have been a simple transcription error. If it was originally written, you might consider the [correction] trick?

In response to Timefortea, I think it's perfectly acceptable to silently correct a small error like that. There is no need to write [sic] unless you have reason or want to notify your reader that the original quotation was incorrect. For example, if you were making a point about the author's misattention to detail it may help your cause to write [sic] here. If however, you have no need to do so, a silent correction here would be the most noble thing to do academically (IMO).

:-)

Thanks! I think that makes sense - I can't imagine anyone going back to the source to tell me that I should have kept the error in!