How to Fact-Check a Nonfiction Manuscript
Fact-checking a nonfiction manuscript means verifying every claim, linking every source, and knowing which claims still need evidence. Here is a systematic approach.
Why fact-check a nonfiction manuscript?
A nonfiction book makes claims. Some are common knowledge. Some need sources. Some are speculative. If you publish claims without evidence, you undermine your credibility. If you publish claims that are wrong, you damage your reputation.
Fact-checking is the process of verifying every claim in your manuscript and linking it to evidence. It is not glamorous, but it is essential. A book with unsupported claims will get negative reviews. A book with false claims will get retractions.
A systematic approach to fact-checking
Fact-checking should be systematic, not ad hoc. Here is a process that works:
- Identify every claim in the manuscript. A claim is any statement that asserts something is true.
- Classify each claim by type: factual, statistical, historical, anecdotal, opinion.
- Assign a support level to each claim: unsupported, partially supported, or supported.
- For each unsupported or partially supported claim, either find evidence or soften the claim.
- Link each supported claim to its source via a citation.
- Run a readiness check before publication to catch any remaining unsupported claims.
Track claims as data, not as text
The traditional approach to fact-checking is to read the manuscript and note claims in a separate document. This works for short pieces but fails for book-length manuscripts. You will miss claims, especially in the middle chapters.
A better approach is to track claims as data within the writing system. When you write or review a chapter, you can select text and create a claim record. The record includes the claim text, its type, its support level, and linked sources. The system tracks claims across the whole manuscript and reports which ones still need evidence.
The Validate Claim workflow
A useful feature is the ability to validate a claim from selected text in the editor. You highlight a passage, click Validate Claim, and the system identifies the type of claim (factual, statistical, historical, etc.), describes what evidence would support it, checks existing project sources for matches, and saves the claim for citation tracking.
This does not fabricate sources. The system tells you what evidence would support the claim, but it does not invent that evidence. You still need to find the actual sources and link them.
Run a readiness check before publication
Before you publish, run a readiness check that reports unsupported claims. This is your last chance to catch claims that slipped through. Every warning should link you to exactly where the claim is in the manuscript so you can fix it.
You may override warnings (some claims are common knowledge and do not need sources), but the warnings should stay on the export record. This way, if a reader challenges a claim, you can check what you overrode and whether you should have found a source.