Editorial policy

Sources

Every page ends with a numbered list of its sources, each linked and dated; every year, name, number and quotation in the text comes from one of them. We rank sources in this order: government and archive records (Library of Congress, the American Film Institute Catalog, the Academy), industry bodies and studios (the Motion Picture Association, theater owners, the writers and directors guilds), then reference works such as Wikipedia, then newspapers, trade magazines and film-industry blogs.

Some film questions have no archive answer. For the wording on a poster, the only available record can be a collection such as Filmsite or the IMP Awards poster pages. We use these as evidence of poster wording, mark them as such under Sources, and never lean on them alone for a credit, a date or a number. When a poster-listing page and a collection differ, the poster listing wins and the page flags the difference.

Never used as evidence: forums, anonymous blogs, social media posts, and quote or book-quote sites where users submit lines (AZQuotes, Goodreads, Shmoop, Wikiquote and similar). If a misattribution matters, we say so without citing those sites.

Taglines are quoted as printed

A tagline is copied from the poster itself or from a page that reproduces it. Posters for one film can carry different lines in different countries or on teaser and final one-sheets; when that matters, the page names the poster. A famous line of dialogue is not a tagline, and we keep the two apart.

Credits

We name who wrote a line or designed a poster only when a source credits them. Where the credit is disputed or unknown, the page flags that in one sentence and moves on.

Dates on each page

Each page shows Published, Updated and Checked dates. Checked is the last day the page was read against its sources; on a new site it can equal the published date. Pages are re-checked when a source changes, when a reader reports a problem and at least once a year.

Checking

Before a page is published, every sentence that states a fact is read against the passage it comes from. If the source does not say it, the sentence goes. The date at the top of each page is the last time it was checked; each source in the list shows the day it was read.

What changes

Box-office figures, budgets and rankings change. A figure on these pages is what the source said on the date shown. Confirm current numbers with the source before you rely on them.

Corrections

Errors are fixed and logged on the corrections page. Write through the contact page.