When a claim grows in the edit.

Somewhere between the notes and the final draft, “suggests” became “proves”. Nobody interviewed it for the new position.

Small edits can change what a sentence asks the reader to believe. “May help” and “will help” are different claims. So are “some participants” and “people”. The smoother version can be the less faithful one.

Read the sentence beside the passage.

Find the part of the source your sentence depends on. Put the two side by side. Compare the verb, the people or things being described, and any conditions that limit the finding. The page’s title may be broader than the passage you need.

These are constructed examples: a source says a change “may help under certain conditions”. The draft says it “will help”. To keep the stronger sentence, you need evidence that supports the stronger promise. Otherwise, return the condition and uncertainty to the wording.

Leave room for a useful result.

A narrow finding can still be worth writing about. You do not have to make it universal to make it interesting. Explain who it concerns and why it matters to your reader.

If the source does not settle the question, keep the question open. That is something the next reader needs to know.

Keep a note of the decision.

Save the exact claim, source URL, relevant passage and what you changed. The free source-notes sheet gives you a place to do that manually; download your note before closing the page.

Verity is fact-checking software for examining factual claims and reviewing their sources. If you try a sentence with it, inspect the references and decide whether the result helps your edit. The poster here illustrates an editing problem; it is not a product result.