Corrections

The first step is always to check, not to change. Somebody at the desk that wrote the page goes back to the source, and if the point is a volatile one it is re-checked against a named source before anything is published. It is the same test any figure has to pass in the first place.

If you are right, we change the page. If we cannot establish either way, we do not leave a disputed figure standing: the value is set back to unverified, which means it is simply not shown to a reader until somebody has checked it. An absent number costs us less than a wrong one costs you.

If we think the page is right, we will write back and tell you what we checked and why we are leaving it. That is a reply, not a brush-off, and you are welcome to come back at us. The underlying standard is set out in our editorial policy.

Straightforward factual errors are dealt with quickly, usually within a few days. Anything that needs a professional opinion takes longer: a point of Italian law, a planning question, a tax treatment. That is because we would rather be slow than confidently wrong, and we will tell you that is what is happening rather than leave the message unanswered.

Not every edit needs announcing. Tightening a sentence, adding a paragraph or replacing a photograph is ordinary maintenance and is covered by the updated date alone.

A material correction is different: a figure that was wrong, a claim we should not have made, a fact that reversed the sense of a passage, or anything a reader might already have acted on. Where that happens we say so on the page itself: what was wrong, what it says now, and the date we changed it. We do not quietly replace the text and hope nobody noticed.

The same applies to anything we have written about a firm we introduce. If we have described somebodys work inaccurately, the correction is made on the page and the firm is told; how those introductions are made in the first place is set out in how we choose the people we introduce.