bloodygranuaile

Having rediscovered my batch of unread editing books during my last bout of quarancleaning book purge, I’m trying to work my way through them. To that end I recently read Brooke Borel’s The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, a thing I probably should have read back when I was editing news instead of technical reports.

While this book is short it is quite thorough, covering the purposes of fact-checking, various craft and administrative aspects of how to do it, advice on working with writers and other types of editors, what kinds of fact-checking are necessary for different forms, and some depressing stuff on the state of the publishing industry. It also has several fact-checking exercises, with instructions clearly written for extremely literal-minded people (a good thing, I think). While the subject matter is by necessity fairly dry, it’s accessibly written and has its moments of humor. I think it’s overall a very solid and helpful resource for its intended audience, especially given how few places have full-time fact-checkers or any kind of training in fact-checking.