We were quite delighted by Karie’s post about the subjunctive in Northanger Abbey.

“A woman, especially,if she have [sic] the misfortune of knowing anything,should conceal it as well as she can.”
Jane Austen,
Northanger Abbey

Back to Jane Austen and subjunctives from my previous post…
The picture above is from page 11 of Masterpiece’s The Complete Guide to Teaching Jane Austen, a beautiful, full-color, teaching guide aimed at educators who want to use the film adaptations of Jane Austen’s works in the classroom. I was looking through the guide and came across the above-referenced quote with the bracketed [sic].

Inserting a [sic] in a quoted text draws attention to the fact that an apparent error in spelling or grammar is part of the original and not an editorial blunder:

Karie (who has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages, Phi Beta Kappa) goes on to prove that Jane Austen’s use of the subjunctive in that quotation is correct. Not that we ever had a doubt. 🙂