Too little
Smooth the detail
They promised Friday.
The summary removes the qualification on which the judgment depends.
Exactitude
Preserve a statement's qualifications and context when recording a possible inconsistency.
Dispositional fidelity to the particulars and limits of what one observes or represents.
Exactitude is fidelity to the particulars and limits of what you observe or represent. Possible deception often turns on a small qualification, an uncertain date, or the difference between an original and a later version. Exactitude keeps those details available without adding a precision the source does not possess.
Try a practice
Examine the account
The original says that the shipment “may arrive Friday.” A briefing turns that into “will arrive Friday,” then describes the missed arrival as a broken promise. You restore the missing word. It is only three letters, but it has been carrying the whole accusation.
An invented illustrative scene.
Exactitude gives…
a detail that keeps its meaning
What Exactitude makes possible
A recipient can reconstruct why you reached a conclusion and see which limit might change it. A concise account remains possible: exactitude may require a single qualifying word rather than another page of detail.
Exactitude: finding the balance
A fitting response
Preserve the limit
The original estimated Friday; the missed estimate needs a different description.
The consequential word and its significance remain visible.
Pursued too far
Demand impossible precision
We need the exact second of every decision before saying anything.
Precision becomes an obstacle unrelated to the question.
Faithful detail serves the decision. Preserve what changes the account, and make uncertainty explicit where the original leaves it.
Exactitude in ordinary life
The cropped quotation
Keep the adjacent sentence when it changes what the quoted speaker appears to mean.
The estimated number
Carry the word “approximately” into a summary instead of displaying a guessed exact figure.
Nearby virtues, different work
Discernment
Discernment evaluates the inference; Exactitude preserves the material from which it is made.
Syntharity (coined term)
Syntharity protects the shape of the whole account; Exactitude protects the particulars within it.
Exactitude and its counterfeits
Counterfeit of Exactitude: Decimal theater
Three decimal places dress a rough estimate as a measurement. State its uncertainty rather than giving the guess a more precise costume.
The immaculate irrelevance
This is a counterfeit of Exactitude: cataloging every staple color leaves the consequential missing qualifier untouched. Attend to the detail that affects representation.
How to cultivate Exactitude
- Keep source wording separate from your paraphrase.
- Preserve qualifications that change the claim’s scope.
- When a detail is uncertain, record that uncertainty rather than guess.
Try it today
Compare one public sentence with your own short summary. Restore any qualification whose removal changes what a reader could reasonably conclude.
Examine material you are entitled to use. Exactitude does not authorize collecting private details unrelated to a legitimate question.
Questions worth returning to
- Which small word changes the scope of the claim?
- Does my presentation look more certain than the source?
Keep the practice proportionate
Examine material you are entitled to use. Exactitude does not authorize collecting private details unrelated to a legitimate question.
These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.
About these practicesQuotations and further reading
Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.
… But the truth is one; it has first to be discovered, then justly and exactly uttered. …
Robert Louis Stevenson · Truth of Intercourse
(zero-based), exact character span 331–416
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1879 essay; Harvard Classics volume 28 historical anthology, Gutenberg 21962Stevenson joins discovering truth to uttering it exactly. The lost word “may” makes that second task as consequential as locating the original statement.
… It requires many faculties combined of observation and memory to speak "the whole truth," and to say "nothing but the truth."
Florence Nightingale · Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not
(zero-based), exact character span 127–252
Florence Nightingale · 1860 work; Gutenberg 12439 transcriptionNightingale distinguishes intending truth from possessing the observation and memory to represent it. This historical account illuminates careless distortion without implying a clinical claim here.
… I have as much difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time; but it has had the compensating advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence, and thus I have been led to see errors in reasoning and in my own observations or those of others.
Charles Darwin · The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
(zero-based), exact character span 743–1085
Charles Darwin · Autobiographical text as printed by Francis Darwin in 1887; Gutenberg 2010Darwin finds errors by struggling to express each sentence clearly. Comparing the estimate and its summary performs that same return to the wording’s actual limits.
Besides, we may observe, in every art or profession, even those which most concern life or action, that a spirit of accuracy, however acquired, carries all of them nearer their perfection, and renders them more subservient to the interests of society. …
David Hume · An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(zero-based), exact character span 0–251
David Hume · 1748 work, revised subsequently; Gutenberg 9662 transcriptionHume connects accuracy with the practical interests of society. Restoring a three-letter qualification serves the affected decision rather than pedantry for its own sake.
When you make a provisional hypothesis, state that it is so, and keep that fact well in front of you.
Mary Everest Boole · Philosophy and Fun of Algebra
(zero-based), exact character span 0–101
Mary Everest Boole · 1909 work, chapter 6; captured Wikisource transcriptionBoole asks that a provisional hypothesis remain labeled as such. The shipment estimate likewise needs its provisional word carried into the summary.
As obscure and imperfect ideas often involve our reason, so, upon the same ground, do dubious words and uncertain signs, often, in discourses and arguings, when not warily attended to, puzzle men's reason, and bring them to a nonplus. …
John Locke · An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II
(zero-based), exact character span 0–234
John Locke · 1690 work; Gutenberg 10616 based on the second editionLocke links doubtful terms to confused reasoning. The article’s precise correction keeps a tentative estimate from becoming an unequivocal promise through altered language.
… Every man may speak truly, but to speak methodically, prudently, and fully, is a talent that few men have. …
Michel de Montaigne · Essays
(zero-based), exact character span 1783–1889
Michel de Montaigne · Charles Cotton translation, revised by William Carew Hazlitt; Gutenberg 3600
Historical English translationMontaigne distinguishes speaking truth from presenting it methodically and fully. Exactitude preserves the consequential qualification even within a short, readable summary.
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