Any sort of a fact error in this class is known as a fatal fact error; that is, is you have ANY fact error in your story, then your final grade for the assignment may be a 1.0, even if everything else is perfect.
That's because there is no such thing as a small error: even a small mismate gives a reader reason to ask, "If they got this small thing wrong, what big things are they messing up?"
In a recent assignment, someone who did an otherwise-fine story got a poor grade because of two fatals: in one instance, they misspelled a city's name, and in a second instance they said an incident happened in one city when in fact it happened in the city next door.
To avoid such problems, we need to be sure not to simply run spell check; we need to check out every noun (person, place or thing)m, every title, every number, every address, every date to make sure what we wrote was what we intended to write: is what's in my story matching what's in my notes?
Then, we must check all of that make sure what we intended to write was correct in the first place. Do a quick Google check of everything and make sure what was in your notes wasn't wrong info given to you, or info you noted incorrectly.
If you're looking for specific proofreading strategies, please refer to related blog posts from earlier this semester.
Either way, make sure you don't have any fatals. Journalism isn't about writing; it's about getting it right.
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