Methods
Citing at the sentence
Bind each assertion to the exact source passage, its locator, reading date and retained copy.
Problem
A document-level citation leaves the reader to find the supporting sentence and decide whether it says what the record claims. This is fragile when a document contains several dates, entities or qualifications. The useful unit is the assertion: one bounded statement linked to the passage that supports it. A locator and retained copy let a later reader inspect the same words even if a web page changes. The reading date records when evidence was observed; it does not make an old assertion current.
Steps
Bound the assertion
Write one sentence naming the subject, property, value and relevant date or scope. Split sentences containing independently testable claims. Preserve qualifications such as "proposed", "as of" and "for this jurisdiction" because dropping them changes what the source supports. The assertion should remain intelligible beside its citation without forcing the reader to reconstruct meaning from a surrounding paragraph.
Quote the passage
Capture the source's asserting sentence verbatim and identify the page, section, paragraph or stable fragment where it appears. If a table supplies the value, include its row and column headings as well as the cell. A paraphrase may explain the passage, but it must not replace the captured wording: the reader needs to compare the assertion with what the source actually said.
Record the observation
Record the source title, issuing body, URL or document identifier, and the date on which the passage was read. Distinguish publication and effective dates printed by the source from the reading date. Where the source has a version number or revision date, retain it. These fields answer different questions about when the source asserted a fact, when it applied, and when someone observed it.
Retain and test
Keep a copy of the material as read, subject to licence and access rules, and bind the citation to that copy with a digest or stable identifier. Reopen the retained material and check that the quoted words and locator resolve there. If support requires inference across passages, state that inference and cite every necessary passage rather than presenting it as a direct quotation.
Checks
- Each factual sentence has a passage a reader can locate.
- Quoted wording, locator, reading date and retained copy agree.
- Publication, effective and reading dates remain distinct.
- Source qualifications remain visible in the assertion.
Pitfalls
- A homepage URL replaces a passage locator.
- A citation supports only part of a compound sentence.
- A revised web page is treated as the original copy.
A worked example
A fictional claim reads: "Halden Therapeutics AG completed its acquisition of Halden Biologics Inc. on 3 March 2026." The citation names the press release, gives its publication date, quotes the sentence "The transaction closed on 3 March 2026", and gives the paragraph in which it appears. The record also holds the date the passage was read and a retained copy with a digest.
A reviewer checks it in four steps. Does the quoted sentence appear in the retained copy at the stated place? Does it say what the claim says, including the date and the names? Are there qualifications nearby, such as "subject to regulatory approval" in the next paragraph? Does the publication date explain when this was known? The review takes a minute. With only the link to the press release, it takes much longer and rests more on trust.
Variations and edge cases
Some evidence is not a sentence. A value in a table is cited by the table, the row and column headings and the cell. A figure is cited by its caption and number, with a note if the value was read from the graphic. When support comes from two sentences together, both are cited and the inference is written down. When a source states a value only by implication, the record says so and does not present the implied value as quoted.
Scanned documents add a step. The citation points to the page image and records the recognised text, and the reviewer should be able to see both. If the recognised text differs from the image, the image governs. For sources in another language, the original sentence is cited with a translation labelled as such, and the translator or tool is noted.
Making the locator robust
Page numbers and paragraph counts break when documents are reformatted. A selector that quotes the target text together with a short passage before and after it survives many such changes, and the web annotation model defines this pattern for exactly that reason. Browsers also support text fragments in links, which highlight a quoted passage on a page, though they depend on the page being unchanged and are not a substitute for a retained copy. The most durable arrangement combines a quote, a locator and a digest of the retained version.
How the method is checked
A sample check is cheap and informative. Select citations at random and ask a reader who has not seen the claim to find the sentence from the citation alone and say whether it supports the claim. The share of citations that pass, and the reasons for failure, tell the team where the method is weak: locators that are too coarse, quotes that omit qualifications, or claims that are compound. Automated checks can confirm that the quote exists in the retained copy, which catches transcription errors but not misreadings.
See also
- Document citation vs sentence citation
- Retaining source copies
- Auditing an LLM answer against its sources
- Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- W3C PROV
- Evidence span
Further reading in the articles
Found an error on this page? See corrections for what counts as one, how to report it and the dated log.
Enquiry
Test this method on one entity.
Name an entity where "Citing at the sentence" would be checked in practice, with its sources and its readers. We reply with what a first record would cover and what it would need from you.
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