How We Check the Facts

Every summary and historical note on Fond Books has been checked claim by claim against sources, and every winner list against the awarding organization's own record or a published table that cites it. This page explains how. A reader who catches one wrong date has reason to doubt every other date, so we treat each claim as something to prove rather than something to assume.

The Prize's Own Record Comes First

Winners, categories, award years, ties, and years with no award are checked against the awarding organization's published record wherever we can reach it, and against a published table that cites it where we cannot, as with the Pulitzer site. Checking this way once caught five wrong winners on a single list in our own records. Prize years follow the prize: a Pulitzer announced in 1926 for a novel published in 1925 is listed under 1926.

Wikipedia and other aggregators help us find sources, and we follow them to the citation behind them, the publisher, or the organization's own announcement wherever we can reach one. Our rule is to cut or qualify a surprising claim that rests on an aggregator alone.

Claim by Claim

Each summary and historical note is read in full and checked one claim at a time, starting with the kinds of claims most likely to be wrong:

• "First," "only," and "never." These claims fail more often than any other kind. An absence claim needs positive evidence that the thing really is absent.
• Quotations. Our standard is to match a quotation word for word against its source, or against a reliable reprint of it, such as a publisher's praise page or a review digest's excerpt. One we cannot trace is paraphrased without attribution or cut.
• Prize dates. Award years, shared prizes, and what a book won against are checked against the prize's table.
• Biographical details. Dates of death, ages, and posts held are checked individually; they are easy to get slightly wrong.
• Publication facts. Publishers, serialization, and the contents of collections are checked against the publisher, library records, or another published source. Page counts vary by edition, and most of ours are rounded figures that name no edition, meant only as a guide to a book's length. When we check a count, we verify it against a publisher or library record and name the edition it comes from.
• Plot and endings. These must describe the book itself, not a film adaptation. We check them against published summaries and reviews, and in the second review against the text itself where a searchable copy exists.
• Numbers. Sales figures, print runs, and similar numbers need a source or they are removed.

The checks are worth the effort. On our first full pass through the Pulitzer poetry list, checkers found about 87 problems across 102 entries that had already been reviewed. They clustered in "first" claims, quotations, and biographical details rather than in the prize records themselves.

A Second, Adversarial Review

Since late September 2026, new entries also get a second, independent review. It treats the first check's conclusions as unproven, uses different sources, and looks again at every passage the first check changed. When we first ran it on one list of 51 books that had already passed the standard check, it found 124 passages to correct, cut, or qualify, and reversed four of the first check's edits.

When Something Can't Be Verified

Our rule is to cut it, or state it with the doubt that belongs to it. We do not soften a claim into something vaguer that still asserts the same thing. Where critics disagree about a book, the copy names who said what.

Keeping the Record Current

Our checking tools track every summary and historical note by its exact text, so an edited passage shows as unchecked until it is checked again. New winners are added after each prize's announcement, and since late September 2026 they go through both reviews. Claims that can go out of date, such as "the only living winner," are the one kind this cannot catch, because their text stays the same when the facts change. If you spot one, please tell us.

What Is Judgment, Not Fact

Descriptions of pace, tone, and reading difficulty are editorial judgments. Our starting points are suggestions for particular tastes, not a ranking. Bookshop links point to editions we have matched to the title and author, but editions and availability change.

Corrections

If you find a mistake, write to [email protected] with the page address, the detail you think is wrong, and a source if you have one. We check the evidence and correct the record. More about the archive and who edits it is on the about page.