Factoid
Encyclopedia
Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English is a one-volume dictionary published by Oxford University Press. It is intended for a family or upper secondary school readership...
as "an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact".
Factoid was coined by Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
. Mailer described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper", and created the word by combining the word fact
Fact
A fact is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability, that is whether it can be shown to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts...
and the ending -oid to mean "similar but not the same". The Washington Times described Mailer's new word as referring to "something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact".
Factoids may give rise to, or arise from, common misconceptions and urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
s.
Examples
- Many residents of Mount Isa, QueenslandMount Isa, Queensland-Culture and sport:The local theatre group, the Mount Isa Theatrical Society, or MITS, often holds plays and musicals, at least once every few months or so....
believe that their city is the world's largest or second largest city by surface area. In reality, Mount Isa is the second largest city in AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
; there are several cities around the world with larger incorporated areas. Their own local council web site incorrectly suggests it is the second largest city on earth. - One belief associated with the Australian property bubbleAustralian property bubbleThe Australian Property bubble is an observation that real estate prices in Australia are valued at more than they are worth. This is a real estate bubble....
is that real estate value doubles every 7 years. However, “Take the city of SydneySydneySydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
- the Mecca of property investing. In 1890, the average Sydney home price was $1,446 (£723). If property really does double every seven years then, in 2009, the average Sydney home would have been worth $189,530,112.00.” Today, the average price of a home in Sydney is closer to half a million dollars rather than $189 million. - The media in CanadaCanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
have often reported that TorontoTorontoToronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
was named by UNESCOUNESCOThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
as the most multicultural city in the world. Although there have been some reports suggesting that Toronto may be one of the world's most diverse cities (see Demographics of TorontoDemographics of TorontoThe demographics of Toronto make Toronto one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Data released by Statistics Canada as part of the 2006 census indicates that Toronto is more ethnically diverse than Miami, Los Angeles, and New York City...
), the United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
agency has never designated any city as being the most multicultural or diverse. Nonetheless, the belief in this status persisted for years, even finding its way onto UNESCO's own web site, into the pages of the New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, and into international media reports in respect of Toronto's two OlympicOlympic GamesThe Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
bids. - The Great Wall of ChinaGreat Wall of ChinaThe Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups...
is often thought as being the only man-made object visible from the moon. In reality no single, man-made object on Earth can be seen with a naked eye from the Earth's moon. Given good circumstances one might be able to discern the result of some human activity such as the changing of the Netherlands' coastFlevolandFlevoland is a province of the Netherlands. Located in the centre of the country, at the location of the former Zuiderzee, the province was established on January 1, 1986; the twelfth province of the country, with Lelystad as its capital...
or the partial drying out of the Aral SeaAral SeaThe Aral Sea was a lake that lay between Kazakhstan in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south...
, but even that would not be easy. Some astronauts have reported seeing the Great Wall from low earth orbit, among a number of man-made structuresMan-made structures visible from spaceMan-made structures visible from earth orbit without magnification include highways, dams, and cities...
. In reality, a viewer would need visual acuityVisual acuityVisual acuity is acuteness or clearness of vision, which is dependent on the sharpness of the retinal focus within the eye and the sensitivity of the interpretative faculty of the brain....
17,000 times better than normal (20/20) to see the Wall from the Moon, and vision 8 times better than normal to see it from low earth orbitLow Earth orbitA low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...
. - Dogs and cats are often thought to be completely color-blindColor blindnessColor blindness or color vision deficiency is the inability or decreased ability to see color, or perceive color differences, under lighting conditions when color vision is not normally impaired...
and see the world in scales of grey. That is wrong. They do have colour vision, dichromate, but not nearly as good as that of humans, trichromate i.e. red, green and blue light. - Many people in TexasTexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
believe that the Texas flagFlag of TexasThe Flag of the State of Texas is defined by law as follows:The Texas flag is known as the "Lone Star Flag" . This flag was introduced to the Congress of the Republic of Texas on December 28, 1838, by Senator William H. Wharton...
is the only state flag that can be flown at the same height as the American flagFlag of the United StatesThe national flag of the United States of America consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars alternating with rows...
, because of Texas's former status as a nation. However, in reality, according to the United States Flag CodeUnited States Flag CodeThe United States Flag Code establishes advisory rules for display and care of the flag of the United States. It is Chapter 1 of Title 4 of the United States Code . This is a U.S. federal law, but there is no penalty for failure to comply with it and it is not widely enforced—indeed, the U.S...
, all state flags are displayed at the same height as the American flag when on separate poles, with the American flag in a position of honor (to its own right). State flags should hang below the American flag while on the same pole, and should never be larger than the American flag. Moreover, Texas is not the only U.S. state to have formerly been an independent nation; HawaiiHawaiiHawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
, VermontVermontVermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
, and CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
share this status.
Other meanings
The word factoid is now sometimes also used to mean a small piece of true but valueless or insignificant information, in contrast to the original definition. This has been popularized by the CNN Headline NewsCNN Headline News
HLN, formerly known as CNN Headline News and CNN2, is a cable television news channel based in the United States and a spinoff of the cable news television channel, CNN. Initially airing tightly-formatted 30-minute newscasts around the clock, since 2005, the channel has increasingly aired long-form...
TV channel, which, during the 1980s and 1990s, used to frequently include such a fact under the heading "factoid" during newscasts. BBC Radio 2 presenter Steve Wright uses factoids extensively on his show.
As a result of confusion over the meaning of factoid, some English-language style and usage guides recommend against its use. Language expert William Safire
William Safire
William Lewis Safire was an American author, columnist, journalist and presidential speechwriter....
in his On Language column advocated the use of the word factlet
Factlet
Language expert William Safire in his On Language column advocated the use of the word factlet to express a "little bit of arcana".Factlet would be an alternative word for factoid. A factoid is a questionable or spurious—unverified, incorrect, or fabricated—statement presented as a fact, but with...
to express a "little bit of arcana".
The term was also used in the original introduction to the Friend of a Friend
FOAF (software)
FOAF is a machine-readable ontology describing persons, their activities and their relations to other people and objects. Anyone can use FOAF to describe him or herself...
Semantic Web
Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
project, introducing a technical use of the term grounded in RDF
Resource Description Framework
The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
technology: "Each new home page that appears on the Web tells the world something new, providing factoids and gossip
Gossip
Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others, It is one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and variations into the information transmitted...
that make the Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
a mine of disconnected snippets of information."
See also
- Just-so storyJust-so storyA just-so story, also called the ad hoc fallacy, is a term used in academic anthropology, biological sciences, social sciences, and philosophy. It describes an unverifiable and unfalsifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals...
- List of Common Misconceptions
- MemeMemeA meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
- Talking pointTalking pointA talking point in debate or discourse is a succinct statement designed to persuasively support one side taken on an issue. Such statements can either be free standing or created as retorts to the opposition's talking points and are frequently used in public relations, particularly in areas heavy...
- TriviaTriviaThe trivia are the three lower Artes Liberales, i.e. grammar, rhetoric and logic. These were the topics of basic education, foundational to the quadrivia of higher education, and hence the material of basic education, of interest only to undergraduates...
- TruthinessTruthinessTruthiness is a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or that it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts....