A correction note should preserve the old claim, new claim, source, and date

A correction note should preserve the old claim, new claim, source, and date. If it only says “updated,” future readers cannot tell whether the old answer was wrong, stale, incomplete, or simply reframed.

The old claim is necessary because people may have cited it, bookmarked it, or repeated it. The new claim is necessary because the corrected record should be usable without reading the entire history. The source is necessary because the change needs evidence. The date is necessary because a correction has its own timeline, separate from the source publication date and the access date.

A compact correction note can use this shape: old claim, new claim, changed because, source link, checked date, affected records, and remaining uncertainty. Remaining uncertainty matters when a correction narrows a claim but does not settle every edge case. For example, a withdrawn dataset may invalidate one metric while leaving the collection method useful as historical context.

The note should avoid blaming language. The useful question is not who made the old statement. The useful question is what changed, where the better source is, and how future summaries should cite the corrected version.

A correction note should preserve the old claim, new claim, source, and date

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