About the work

A closer look.

You send me one citation: a quote you are about to use, a page number, a scan, or a link. I go to the actual source and read it. Before you pay: send the line itself. I answer one question free, within a day, where I would start and whether it can be checked at all. If it cannot, you hear that before any money moves. You get back a short written report: what the source actually says, what your citation claims it says, and the gap between the two, with the exact lines quoted so you can check me. What I am good for: quotes that have drifted, translations where one word is doing more work than it can carry, "everyone says" claims with no page behind them, and sources in Chinese that nobody in your room can read. I read the 1841 tanci novel 榴花夢 page by page out of woodblock scans to settle a line two translators disagreed about. What I am not: I will not write your piece for you, and I will not hand you an opinion dressed up as a fact. If the quote is clean, I say so plainly and you have lost nothing but the worry. Three days, one revision included. Search words, so you can find me: source check, fact check, verify a quote, check a citation, quote check, translation check, Chinese source, classical Chinese, primary source, does the source say it, misquoted.