Rules
Part of Misquotes and fact checks: the questions that matter
A written rule for a misquotes and fact checks collection
A standing rule for a misquotes and fact checks collection: what counts as sourced, the default, living people, rights, corrections and overrides.
Arguments about a specific quotation are almost never won on the evidence. They are won by whoever cares more, at four in the afternoon, with a deadline. The way out is to stop having the argument per line and settle the general questions once, in writing, when nothing is at stake.
A misquotes and fact checks collection needs that rule before the first disputed line arrives. The decisions below are written so that they bind instead of decorating a style guide.
What to take away
- A standing rule beats a case-by-case judgment, because the case always arrives under pressure.
- Write rules about evidence, not about individual lines.
- The rule that matters most is the default when the trail runs out.
- A rule nobody can apply without asking you is not a rule.
Why the same argument recurs
The pattern is stable. Someone wants a line, and someone else says it cannot be sourced. The first person replies that it appears everywhere, that a respectable outlet used it, and that removing it weakens the piece.
All three points are true and none of them is evidence, but they are persuasive in the room, and the line goes in. Argued this way, the person who wants the line always has the stronger case: leaving it out has a visible cost, while bad attribution does not.
Settle the question at the policy level, and the framing flips. The person who wants the line is now asking for an exception, and the exception has a named owner and a written cost.
Decisions worth making once
Six decisions do most of the work, and the rule further down adds two more. Make each one in writing before any line is disputed.
What counts as sourced. Name the minimum: a located passage in an identified work with an edition and a locator. Anything less is attributed, not sourced.
The distinctions are the ones in the quote context and sources guide, and they are worth adopting wholesale rather than reinventing: sourced means someone opened the record and wrote down where the line sits; attributed means only that a name is attached to it; widely quoted means neither. Only the first of the three is evidence.
What Counts as Sourced
- Located passage in identified work
- Edition recorded
- Locator recorded
- Anything less is attributed, not sourced
- Living peoplestricter standard, stated as such
- Rule reaches captions, graphics, slides, social, walls
The default when nothing is found. This is the important one. Two defaults are possible and only one of them is defensible: the line is not used. The alternative, using it with a hedge, converts every failed check into a publication.
Living people. A stricter standard, stated as such. An unsourced quotation attributed to a living person is a claim about what that person said, and there is no hedge that repairs it. The lessons on leadership quotes cover quotations used inside workplace arguments, the class that carries the most risk in practice.
Where the rule applies. Body text is easy. The rule has to reach captions, graphics, slide decks, social posts, and anything printed on a wall, because those are where unsourced lines actually live and where corrections never reach them.
Reproduction limits. Separate from attribution and often confused with it. Whether you may reprint a passage is a rights question governed by law rather than by scholarship.
In the United States that law is the fair use provision at 17 U.S.C. §107, which calls for consideration of four factors: the purpose of the use, the nature of the work, how much is used, and the effect on the market.
The guide to quoting in books under fair use applies them to a concrete case. The U.S. Copyright Office states that courts decide fair use case by case, with no formula based on a word count.
Corrections. Decide the form before you need it. Published corrections practice is a long-established genre with conventions worth borrowing: say what was wrong, say what is right, and leave the record legible. The piece on correcting misquotes sets out four repairs and what the note must contain.
Name where the check starts
A rule that says "check the source" should also say where checking begins, so that applying it needs no escalation. Three kinds of reference cover most starting points.
- Quote Investigator, run by Garson O'Toole, traces the earliest appearance of a line and the path by which it changed.
- Snopesand PolitiFact keep large libraries of checked claims, including many quotations attributed to public figures.
- Bartlett's Familiar Quotationsand The Yale Book of Quotations are the reference registers to reach for when the question is which work, edition, and speaker a line belongs to.
Some lines resist all of these, which is why the decisions above matter more than any single lookup. The companion piece on the questions that matter covers how a check searches for the earliest appearance.
Writing a rule that can be applied
A rule that requires judgment to apply has not removed the argument, it has relocated it. Three properties make one usable.
Weak Rule vs Usable Rule
Weak
- Sourcing
- Reliably sourced
- Living people
- Take extra care
- Corrections
- Correct promptly
Usable
- Sourcing
- Source opened, edition and page recorded
- Living people
- Unsourced line does not run
- Corrections
- Names wording, evidence, applies to graphics
- It is checkable by the person holding the line.A writer should be able to apply it without escalating. "Can you point at a page" is checkable. "Is this sufficiently well established" is not.
- It states the default.What happens when the check fails, without further discussion.
- It names who can override, and what an override costs.Usually one named person, and usually a written note in the file.
Compare two versions of the same rule.
| Weak | Usable |
|---|---|
| Quotations should be reliably sourced | A quotation runs only if someone has opened the source and recorded the edition and page |
| Take extra care with living people | An unsourced line attributed to a living person does not run |
| Correct errors promptly | A correction names the previous wording and the evidence, and is applied to graphics as well as text |
The right-hand column is longer and duller. It also survives contact with a deadline, which the left-hand column does not.
The rule, written out
The six decisions plus the override and the record, as one rule you can adopt as written.
- Sourcing.A quotation runs only if someone has opened the source and recorded the speaker, the work, the edition or URL, and the locator: a page, a timestamp, or a line.
- Default.If the source cannot be located, the line is not used. Not with a hedge, and not because it is everywhere.
- Living people.A quotation attributed to a living person stays out until it is traced to a record or confirmed by that person's office. No hedge repairs an unsourced line here.
- Scope.The rule reaches body text, captions, graphics, slide decks, social posts, and wall copy, because those are where unsourced lines live and where corrections never arrive.
- Rights.Attribution is not permission. Whether a passage may be reprinted is a separate question, answered by fair use at 17 U.S.C. §107 or by a permission grant.
- Override.One named person may override the rule, and every override leaves a written note in the file.
- Corrections.Say what was wrong, say what is right, and leave the record legible.
- Record.The file carries what was searched, what was found, what remains open, and the reasoning behind the decision.
A check the writer can run alone
The test of the rule is whether the person holding the line can apply it without asking anyone. Before a quotation runs, the writer should be able to tick every box.
- Someone has opened the source and recorded the speaker and the work.
- The edition or URL and the locator are in the file.
- If the speaker is living, the line is traced to a record or confirmed by that person's office.
- Captions, graphics and social posts carrying the line follow the same standard.
- Permission to reprint has been considered separately from attribution.
If any box stays empty, the default applies and the line is not used. An override is the only way around that, and it leaves a written note.
Recording the decision, not just the outcome
Whatever the rule, the file should carry the reasoning behind each finding: what was searched, what was found, what remains open.
Fields like these are standard in disciplines that handle testimony carefully, and the Oral History Association's Principles and Best Practices for Oral History is a good model for how documentation obligations get written down by people who take them seriously.
What the File Records
- What was searched
- What was found
- What remains open
- Reasoning behind each finding
- Recorded finding prevents redoing the work
The practical payoff is repetition. The same line comes back six months later from a different direction, and a recorded finding means nobody redoes the work or reaches a different answer.
A record has five fields: the line as it circulates, what was searched, what was found, what remains open, and the decision. That is the whole form, and it is what makes a file useful six months later.
The honest trade-off
The rule has a cost, and it arrives first. It asks for the time to open the source and record the edition and the locator, and it asks for it on the line everyone wants to keep.
That work lands before the benefit does, which is why an unwritten rule is dropped the first time it is inconvenient.
Cost of the Rule vs Failure Mode
What the rule costs
- Lines
- Pieces lose lines
- Time
- Unbudgeted checks
- Standing
- Only outlet to drop it
- Findings
- Some unresolvable
What it avoids
- Lines
- Hollow attribution caught
- Time
- Nothing else on page trusted
- Standing
- Reader draws reasonable inference
- Findings
- Customer audience cost avoided
Against that: the failure mode you are avoiding is a specific and unpleasant one. A reader who checks a single attribution, finds it hollow, and concludes that nothing else on the page was checked either is drawing a reasonable inference. When the audience is a customer, that inference is expensive.
Common questions
Is a written rule not excessive for a small operation?
The smaller the operation, the more it helps, because a small team has no second reader to catch the problem. One page is enough. The point is that it exists before the argument, not that it is thorough.
What if the standard is stricter than the field's?
That is normal and survivable. State the standard publicly, so a missing line reads as a policy rather than an oversight, and so a reader can weigh what your pages assert.
Who should own the override?
One person, named, whose override leaves a written trace. An override that is invisible is indistinguishable from the rule not existing.
How often should the rules be revisited?
Rarely, and never during a dispute about a specific line. Revisiting them under pressure is how a standard becomes a negotiation.
