Why "Sic" Publishing?

From time to time, someone asks what “Sic” means.

It is usually asked with a hint of uncertainty — as if it might be a typo that has somehow made it onto the front of a website and stayed there.

It hasn’t.

“Sic” comes from Latin. It means “thus” or “so”, but most people will recognise it from its use in writing — [sic] — to indicate that something has been reproduced exactly as it was originally written or said.

Even if it looks odd. Even if it reads awkwardly. Even if it makes you pause.

We are well aware that choosing a Latin word as a name risks sounding a little pretentious. That is probably fair. But we liked its precision — and, if we are honest, we also liked that it sounds like “sick”, in the more positive, colloquial sense of the word.

That combination felt about right.

There is also a more sceptical reading. For some, sic signals a mistake — something that needs correcting, or at least drawing attention to. In that sense, the name can seem like an error in itself.

We prefer to take a different view.

To us, sic is not about pointing out what is wrong. It is about making clear that something has been left as it is.

That idea runs through what we do.

At Sic Publishing, we are interested in voices that are often edited out, softened, or reshaped to fit a more comfortable narrative. Testimony is rarely tidy. Lived experience does not always arrive in polished language. And when people speak about the realities they have lived through — whether that is exile, repression, or displacement — there is often a quiet pressure to make those stories more acceptable to an outside audience.

We try not to do that.

That does not mean we do not edit. Of course we do. Editing is part of the job. But there is a difference between shaping a text so it can be read, and reshaping it until it becomes something else.

That difference matters.

In the end, the name is a small one, but it carries a simple intention: this is how it was said.

And sometimes, that is enough.