I’m a quality assurance proofreader. I carry out some fact-checking when requested, but I’m not like the fact-checkers who work in journalism. Whereas they often check every fact in a story, my fact-checking focuses on specific details that affect how a text functions.

My recent fact-checking experience includes:

• Checking personal details in a document against personal details on other documents to make sure they match
• Checking prices in a document against prices listed on official sources and making sure that the supplier is listed
• Checking photograph captions against a master list of photographs on another client document
• Checking the presentation of company names in a text against the official presentation of those names online

This kind of fact-checking is closely related to cross-checking details within documents. When cross-checking, I would pick up that a company was called Smith Ltd on page one but Smythe Ltd on page two.

What fact-checking means in journalism

Fact-checkers in journalism often work on a much bigger scale. Imagine a politician who claims that a million people came to a public square to hear them speak. Journalistic fact-checkers would test the claim by looking at social media images from the event (and weeding out AI fabrications). Additionally, they look at maps to see if it’s possible for the public square to contain such a large crowd.

As a QA proofreader, it’s not my place to check those kinds of claims. I work on documents that are almost ready to go out into the world. I only carry out formal fact-checking when the client asks me to.

Grey areas around fact-checking in QA proofreading

There is a grey area. From time to time, I spot factual errors without having to look them up. I’m ethically bound to point these out without overstepping the boundaries of what I have been hired to do. After all, nobody wants to hire a plumber who goes about criticising their interior decor.

Let’s just say that a client believes that Henry Tudor, a 16th-century king of England, invented a time machine, travelled to 19th-century London, and carried out the Jack the Ripper murders. They write an article about it, which they then ask me to QA proofread. (This is a hypothetical client scenario. Nothing this fun has ever happened to me.)

It would not be my place to fact-check the big picture of my client’s argument or the historical correctness of it. If the science is wrong, becoming aware of it is not normally my responsibility. Especially if the client hasn’t asked me to fact-check their claims.

However, the text might contain minor factual issues that could plausibly be typing mistakes or production errors.

• Tudor is a Scottish surname (it’s not, it’s Welsh)
• Calais is in England (it was controlled by England, but it’s in France)
• Henry VIII defeated Richard III (he didn’t, Henry VII did)

As these points touch on general knowledge and could arguably be slips of the pen caused by the writer’s tiredness, I would flag them up. They fall into the category of “production error,” which is very much in my scope as a QA proofreader.

If I noticed that the Henry VIII/Jack the Ripper murder victims were in the wrong order, I could respond by suggesting that the use of the wrong name might be a slip of the pen. This would give the writer an opportunity to investigate further without me being the plumber who criticised their curtains. I wouldn’t openly say to them that a major part of their argument appears to be wrong, as I would have to respect that the writer had not hired me as a developmental editor.

In this scenario, I would probably discover the writer’s mistake when checking the spelling of the murder victims’ names. This kind of “accidental fact-check” can happen surprisingly often.

The grey area and the QA proofreader’s job description

I say this is a grey area because I can never guarantee that my general knowledge is good enough to pick up these kinds of mistakes. I never want to give clients the impression that I am the ultimate safety net for all things.

For example, if I were proofreading a specialist text about steam trains, I would make sure the client understands that I can’t identify the different engines in photographs and compare them with the captions. (A proofreader who has that kind of knowledge is a blessing to specialist publications about steam trains.) The text would need to be reviewed by a separate fact-checker and I could then cross-check and proofread it.

It’s also a grey area because this kind of fact-checking is rarely an official part of a QA proofreader’s job description. These kinds of factual slips of the pen can’t really be planned for by managers. They tend to occur because the person with primary responsibility for factual correctness (usually the writer) is working under pressures such as time constraints.