You Make Me Sic: Difference between revisions

On the flipside of showing intelligence, this trope can also be used to show that someone is [[Comically Missing the Point]]. Also, fairly often, the "grammatical error" will be more of a point of style that's [[You Fail Linguistics Forever|not actually considered incorrect grammar]] by anyone ''but'' pedants (Bad to end sentences with, prepositions are.<ref>This is the sort of nonsense up with which we will not put!</ref>) -- writers who really want to [[Shown Their Work|Show Their Work]] may have the corrected party reply [[wikipedia:Linguistic prescriptivism|to that effect]]. Less often, the "error" might actually be technically correct, but this will only be known to really hardcore grammarians.<ref>For example, "that'll learn 'em" actually comes from an archaic meaning of the verb "to learn" which means "to teach".</ref>

 

 

The trope name is a [[Just for Pun|pun]]; the word "sic"<ref>Literally Latin for "thus", as in "found thus".</ref> is used in quotation and transcription to indicate that a (supposed) spelling or grammatical mistake was made by the original writer/speaker, not the person quoting/transcribing them.

 

{{examples}}

== Advertising ==

* A Swedish PSA featured a man correcting a bathroom graffiti, reading "Robert är kuk" [Robert is cock] to "Robert är en kuk" [Robert is a dick], while awkwardly leaning over a guy standing next to him at a urinal.

* A Snickers ("not going anywhere for a while?") commercial features a groundskeeper [[Time Compression Montage|spending several hours]] carefully laying out and painting the design in the end zone of an American football field. Just as he finishes, one of the players (who had been practicing in the background) comes up and says "Great job! But, who are the 'Chefs'?"

 

* In the third volume of ''[[Drama Con]]'', Christy is writing on her blog, and months after seeing Matt (who she has feelings for, and vice versa) at the Yatta! Con, his only reply is that she spelled a word wrong.

* Is a [[Running Gag]] throughout ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'', with Kenshin writing down important notes to his comrades during important battle intermissions, but his friends always comment on his poor handwriting first.

** The first time it shows up in the manga, Kaoru [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|says Kenshin's handwriting]] [[Take That Me|is as bad as]] [[Nobuhiro Watsuki|Watsuki's]].

 

== Comic Books ==

'''Deux Deux:''' (''resignedly'') Si. }}

 

* In ''[[Solitary Locust]]'', Twilight [[Tropes Are Flexible|sort of]] does this, she berates someone (Spike) for using “that kind of language in this library”

 

'''Mike:''' Okay, first of all, it's "creetin". If you're going to threaten me, do it properly. }}

** Good thing Randall's not [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cretin British] or [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cretin French], or [[Bilingual Bonus|Mike would look like an idiot]].

 

== Films -- Live-Action ==

** William also criticizes Jamal's use of conjunctions at the beginning of paragraphs. Jamal retorts that this is actually a valid usage that has emerged during Forrester's time as a recluse (when you want to add emphasis or call attention to a point).

* ''[[1776|Seventeen Seventy Six]]'': "The word is unalienable." "I'm sorry, but inalienable is correct." This after the huge fight over slavery.

* In ''[[Secretary]]'', Mr. Grey's edits of Lee's misspellings and typos actually become a method through which they {{spoiler|have dominant-submissive S&M encounters.}}

* In ''Amreeka'', Fadi, a recent immigrant from the Middle East, leaves school with his cousin and finds out that someone has graffitied their car with "Al-Queda" (or something similar, not an accepted variant of al-Qaida). One of them points out they didn't even spell it right.

 

== Jokes ==

'''Teacher:''' Never put "is" after "I". Always put "am" after "I".

'''Student:''' Okay. I am the ninth letter of the alphabet. }}

 

== Literature ==

* In ''Things Can Only Get Better'' by John O'Farrell, the author describes how, as a young Socialist, he went round the walls of his home town spraying "Coal, not Dole." on the walls. Next day he is mocked by his comrades for taking so much time to get the punctuation right.

* In the Book of the Radio Satire Show ''Week Ending Cabinet Leaks'', Carol Thatcher's draft autobiography is covered in blue-pencilled notes from the publisher, which is fair enough. But at the end, they've written "C Minus Minus. Must try harder".

* A book of essays by [[John Scalzi]] is called ''Your Hate Mail Will be Graded''.

* In ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'': Josephine has just barely managed to convince the ax-crazy villain to let her live. What does she do five seconds later? Well, correcting him on his grammar, of course! He then promptly throws her in a lake full of carnivorous leeches. The writer makes a huge point about Josephine's obsession with grammar and spelling. In fact, the way the kids realise her suicide note isn't sincere is by the large amount of spelling and grammar mistakes in it.

* Private Eye once did a column spoofing the columnist Keith Waterhouse (a noted [[Grammar Nazi]]). In it he described seeing an incredibly offensive piece of graffiti "Down with wimmin, there all tarts" which so offended him that he had to paint over it... to change the "there" to "they're".

* In ''Ramona's World,'' Ramona gets an essay back covered with red marks—all correcting her spelling errors. This leads her to consider her teacher to be a grammar-and-spelling Nazi. Later she tells said teacher that the librarian's licence-plate is spelled wrong (It says LIBARY rather than LIBRARY) and is disappointed to learn that due to Oregon law, it couldn't be spelled in full. Even ''later'' she and Daisy send a letter to a local business, chastising them on their poor grammar in their newspaper ad.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]''

** In the episode "The Other Guys", after having his cover blown and being brought before the leader of a large group of Jaffa, O'Neill is zapped with a torture stick and has the following exchange:

'''Jack O'Neill:''' You ended that sentence with a preposition! Bastard! }}

** This happens quite often in the series, being a trademark aspect of his character; deflating the theatrics of the [[Large Ham|Goa'uld]] is just what he does. When not outright correcting, he's delivering horrible puns.

'''Skinner:''' Twice. }}

* Series one of ''[[Little Britain]]'' has the character of a teacher who had [[Hot for Student|married one of his former students]], but continues to treat her as if she is still at school. In one episode, when she gives him a card for their wedding anniversary, he proceeds to correct the grammar mistakes and put "See Me" at the end.

 

== Music ==

* Sloan's first single "Underwhelmed" is made of this.

{{quote|''She wrote out a story about her life

** Though that last line is also quite a sly pun, particularly in the context of the song.

* Who could forget "I Love You Period" by Dan Baird?

{{quote|''Then one day I decided,

 

== New Media ==

** Ironically, he himself misspells the word "sentence" while correcting the other person's grammar.

 

 

* In the song "One Hundred Easy Ways" in ''Wonderful Town'', Ruth explains how to lose a man by correcting his grammar:

{{quote|''You've found your perfect mate and it's been love from the start,

Just say, "I'm afraid you've made a grammatical error. It's not 'To ''who'' I give my heart', it's 'To ''whom'' I give my heart.' -- You see, with the use of the preposition 'to,' 'who' becomes the indirect object, making the use of 'whom' imperative; which I can easily show you by drawing a simple chart."

That's a fine way to lose a man.'' }}

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Discworld Noir]]'':

'''[[The Jeeves|Butler]]:''' I am not in a position to ascertain the effectiveness of sir's eyesight. However, sir ''may'' see the Count, which is what I believe sir was attempting in sir's uneducated way to ask. }}

* In one part of ''[[Dragon Quest IX]]'', a pair of [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain]]s kidnap the daughter of a rich family and demand a ransom. The person who finds the note reads it and is absolutely shocked at their ''craptacular'' spelling. It actually takes him a second to realise they kidnapped her.

 

== Web Animation ==

* Yahtzee of ''[[Zero Punctuation]]'' visually did this during the "mailbag showdown" where the emails that appeared on screen were corrected as they were read (including one instance of "See Me [After Class]").

* Strong Bad from ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' usually pronounces the misspelled words the way they're spelled, though occasionally he will tab up into the message and edit the errors. Among other things, the character of Homsar was born this way... his name was originally a misspelling of Homestar in an early sbemail.

 

== Web Comics ==

* [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070528 This strip] of ''[[Girl Genius]]'', during [[Caffeine Bullet Time]].

** The author also made fun of people who refer to themselves as grammar nazis, by making up a character who educated children on the proper use of punctuation. The Komma Klansman.

* ''[[A Modest Destiny]]'': [http://www.squidi.net/comic/amd/view.php?ep=1&id=48\]

* ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' plays with the trope [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1942 here].

* The [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]] to ''[[Get Medieval]]'' stated that, ten years after the main events, the comic books Neithe writes always contain a thank-you to Asher in their acknowledgments... "and his articles often contain lists of her mistakes." Neithe is shown laughing heartily as she reads what's apparently one of those lists.

* ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'' has the North American Grammar Squirrel. He first appeared when Molly and Golly were arguing about the correct adverb form of "cosmogony". It's "cosmogonically", in case you wondered.

* ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' [http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/11/03 employs Mr. Period and his friends] for this purpose.

* ''[[The Oatmeal]]'' [http://theoatmeal.com/comics/top_tweets LOVES] [http://theoatmeal.com/comics/ie this] trope.

 

== Web Original ==

* The website ''[[Acts of Gord]]'' claims that "The Gord" does this whenever someone gives him a bad CV. [http://www.actsofgord.com/Annoy/chapter11.php An example (about halfway down)].

* Sex columnist Dan Savage will occasionally respond to hate mail simply with grammar corrections. He's also inclined to correct his own errors in his blog, when pointed out.

* Naturally, shows up often in the ''[[Protectors of the Plot Continuum]]'' stories. Upon seeing a [[Captain Obvious]] title that promised a particularly gory mission, one agent said, "Is it bad that my first response to that was '[[Comically Missing the Point|That needs an Oxford comma]]'?"

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM This] ''College Humor'' sketch features a Nazi who is also a [[Grammar Nazi]].

* [[The Nostalgia Critic]]'s Top 11 F*ck Ups had the fans constant pointing out of little spelling mistakes he made in the list, including one where he spells Nostalgia wrong.

* In the middle of ranting about how he thinks Chris Brown is [[Smug Snake|a horrible excuse for a human being]], [[Todd in the Shadows]] also grammar-checks one of his tweets, giving him a D-.

* It is common practice for a commenter on [[FSTDT]] to correct the poor spelling, grammar, and word usage of truly hysterical fundies, in addition to (or sometimes, instead of) mocking the factual inaccuracies of their posts.

* [[YouTube]] often has responses to words that are spelled fine stating that the given word is spelled wrong, except the "correct" spelling is a ''completely different word'', usually an antonym.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Befitting a reporter, Clark Kent once used this to defeat Mr. Mxyzptlk in ''[[Superman: The Animated Series|Superman the Animated Series]]''.

* ''[[The Proud Family]]'': Penny, in voice-over, says the only reason she didn't pull this trope on the [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]] in episode "Diary of a Bad Girl" was because her mouth was full of the cookies she stole, when he sarcastically asked, "Got no milk?"

 

== Real Life ==

** Some foreign language teachers take it a step further and insist that you ask such things in the language in question; for instance, if the class is Spanish, you might have to ask "Puedo ir al baño?", and asking in English gets you a "No comprendo" in response.<ref>Ironically, the stem-changing verb Poder from which Puedo is derived from translates to "to be able", i.e. "can", so this is roughly asking "Can I go to the bathroom?", which most teachers dislike.</ref>

** In the Romance languages, and likely others, it's impossible to distinguish between "can" and "may" without resorting to such constructions as "do I have the physical ability" or "do I have permission?"

* [["Weird Al" Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovic]], as demonstrated by [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgTsF1ZCuRc exhibit A] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGWiTvYZR_w exhibit B].

** His band also gets into the act in "Al's Band":

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]

[[Category:A Failure to Communicate]]