Fact checking fiction

Those of you who are regular readers will recall that a couple of times (examples, here and here) we have sung the praises of fact-checking in magazines (and entertained comments from those who think it is either a sublime, or a stupid, practise). We must admit,however, that usually we are thinking about non-fiction fact checking and had never given much thought to fact checking fiction. Fortunately, the editors of Taddle Creek have done so and in a thorough, and amusing editor's note in the current issue (summer, 2006), have explained why they think it is important and, further, that they are making available an inexpensive 16-page guide to same -- The Taddle Creek Guidebook to Fact-checking Fiction.

"Why, oh why, don’t more authors and editors see the importance and nobility surrounding the art of fact-checking fiction?..." the editor-in-chief Conan Tobias asks. "The failure of so many literary journals and book publishers to fact-check has resulted in a plethora of factually inaccurate novels and short stories being published each year."

He goes on with several examples, one of which is "Taddle Creek’s editor would have flown into a blinding rage if the New Brunswick city of Saint John had somehow appeared spelled as “St. John” in Leanna McLennan’s “Chained for Life.” Does Jim’s Restaurant, on Queen Street East, really claim to offer “the best westerns,” as immortalized in Adrienne Weiss’s poem “Augusta Could Be a Woman the Driver is Trying to Find,” or does it more modestly offer “pretty good westerns”? (It’s the former, and they are.)"

Fair play would suggest that you buy the latest issue of Taddle Creek to read the entire editorial note and support this excellent magazine. To find out more about getting your very own copy of the chapbook, write P.O. Box 611, Station P, Toronto, Ont. M5S 2Y4, or editor@taddlecreekmag.com.

[P.S. We've gone into this before, but is fact checking one word, or two? and does it have a hyphen?]

[P.P.S. Conan Tobias pointed out that we had misquoted the spelling of 'fact-checking' in the first quoted paragraph; this has been corrected, now. He explained further...

In regards to your P.S., we put a lot of thought into that, as the word obviously appeared quite a few times in the guidebook, and, after much consulting of Oxford, Webster’s, and Chicago, decided our in-house rule would be to hyphenate the verb form and not hyphenate the noun (there was never really any question of it being two words). We think that’s in keeping with the various rules and decisions of the above guides.