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Lloyd Sealy Library
John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Fact Checking, Verification & Fake News

This guide was created by the Research Center at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism

Common Errors and Frequent Sources of Error

Common Errors

  • numbers and statistics (mixing up “billions” & “millions”)
  • names of people, titles, locations
  • ages
  • historical facts
  • superlatives like “only,” “first” and “most”
  • dates

Frequent Sources of Error

  • working from memory
  • making assumptions
  • second-hand sources

Source: Writing and Editing for Digital Media, Brian Carroll, via Google Books