Our Fact-Checking Habits

Practical writing goes wrong in small ways: a menu that moved two updates ago, a rule that only applies in one country, a figure copied from a page that copied it from somewhere else. These are the habits we use to keep that from happening.

The sources we reach for first

1. The maker or the authority. A device manual, a supplier's own billing guide, a court's official website, a tax office's published guidance.
2. The document itself. When we explain an invoice or a bill, we work from real layouts, with personal details removed, not from memory.
3. Hands-on testing. Where a step can be tried, such as a router setting or a cleaning routine, one of us tries it.
4. Established reference works. Standards bodies and widely used technical references, for definitions and terminology.

Forums and social posts are useful for spotting what confuses people. They are not used as proof.

Three questions for every claim

• Is it true everywhere? If an answer depends on country, state, provider or model, the article says so.
• Is it still true? Software, tariffs and court procedures change. We check the current version, not the one we remember.
• Would a reader be harmed if it were wrong? Electrical, legal and money topics get a second look and a pointer to a professional.

Numbers we deliberately leave out

Prices, fee schedules, claim limits and interest rates go stale quickly and vary by place. Rather than print a figure that may be wrong by the time you read it, we tell you where the current number is published. Worked examples, such as a square-footage sum, use simple illustrative values and are labelled as such.

We also do not invent statistics, surveys or quotes. If a claim needs a number to stand up and we cannot point to a reliable source, the claim comes out.

Updates and older posts

The archive includes posts from earlier years. When a reader flags a problem in one of them, it goes through the same checks as a new draft. Updates follow the routine on Where Corrections Go.

See the habits in use

Our guide on how to read an electricity bill is a good example: it explains every line without quoting a single tariff, and sends you to your supplier for the exact terms. The wider principles behind our writing are on Standards We Keep.