The Little Guide to Writing for Impact by Katherine Barrett;Richard Greene;Donald F. Kettl;

Author:Katherine Barrett;Richard Greene;Donald F. Kettl;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing
Published: 2024-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

“All We Want Are the Facts, Ma’am”

Make Sure There’s Evidence to Support Your Argument

Through the 1950s one of the two major characters in the very popular television show Dragnet was Sgt. Joe Friday, played by actor Jack Webb. He was a taciturn, monosyllabic cop who couldn’t waste his time with female suspects who were talking too much for his pleasure. Out of that grew the catchphrase “Just the facts, ma’am,” which is what people believed he frequently said to the women he interrogated. We’ve heard that line over and over, and originally, it seemed like an ideal title for this chapter.

Then we did a little fact-checking.

According to award-winning website Shmoop, which delves into the origins of famous quotes, “he never said those exact words! The closest he came was ‘All we want are the facts, ma’am.’”1

This struck us as quite an irony as the point of this chapter is to stress the importance of ensuring accuracy in anything you write and to provide some time-tested techniques for fact-checking.

Of course, everyone remembers the famous line from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker, “Luke, I am your father.” Except, as it turns out, he never says it. What Darth Vader actually says is “No, I am your father.”2

People who are trained in an academic way of writing are generally extremely careful about their facts—and often footnote each and every one of them (and sometimes everyone who has ever written about each fact). But when they try to broaden their audience to have greater impact and enter a realm that’s more like traditional journalism, surprisingly simple errors can crop up—like the incorrect spelling of a source’s name or an incorrect title.

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