The source comes before the sentence.

Write the question and the evidence boundary

Begin an article with a question that a defined reader can use. Then specify the evidence needed to answer it: an official statistical release, an approved interview, a documented process or a clearly labelled illustrative calculation. A business publication should know the difference between a reported fact and its own interpretation. Write that distinction into the brief. If the evidence only supports a national trend, do not present it as proof of demand for one project, hotel or industrial site. Narrow the question when necessary rather than expanding the claim beyond the source.

Separate source discovery from verification

Search tools can help locate candidate material, but discovery is not verification. Open the originating document, identify the issuing organisation and check whether it is the current relevant release. Read the table headings, definitions and notes surrounding the figure. A news summary may omit a qualification that materially changes the interpretation. Save the original URL, document title, release date and page or section used. If the primary source cannot be accessed, record the limitation and seek an appropriate alternative; do not treat a convincing search snippet as a complete evidence file.

Build a claim register

Use a simple claim register while drafting. Each material claim gets an identifier, its proposed wording, the supporting source, the relevant extract or location, the reporting period, the reviewer and a status. Useful statuses are verified, needs clarification, opinion and illustrative example. A claim marked needs clarification must not silently become verified when a writer improves its wording. Keep the register compact enough to use on every article. It should let a second editor trace a headline number or a strong business assertion without repeating the entire research process from the beginning.

Check the denominator before the headline

Many business errors arise from comparing unlike measures. Check whether a number is a stock or a flow, a full-year total or a year-to-date value, current prices or constant prices, people or visits, a percentage change or a percentage-point change. As an illustrative example, a rate moving from 40% to 50% rises by 10 percentage points and by 25% relative to its starting level; those descriptions answer different questions. Write the denominator and period beside the number. Avoid inferring an individual company’s performance from a national aggregate that describes a different population.

Use AI within a defined editorial job

AI can prepare a research checklist, organise approved notes, identify unanswered questions and propose a first structure. Give it the source material and a rule to flag unsupported statements. The editor still needs to verify the result. Google’s guidance on generative content calls for manual fact-checking and review, including metadata, and warns that producing many pages without added value can breach its scaled-content policy. Use automation to reduce repetitive preparation so that research and judgement receive more attention. A faster workflow is useful only if the resulting answer remains accurate and worth reading.

Make authorship and image context clear

Tell readers who is accountable for the work and how substantial AI assistance was used. Do not invent a human expert, professional qualification, interview or field visit to make a draft appear more authoritative. Google’s people-first guidance specifically cautions against fabricated authorship. The same principle applies to visuals. An abstract illustration can explain an idea, but it should not be captioned as a photograph of a real project. Match each image to the article’s purpose, record its origin and usage rights, and ensure that charts describe their actual data rather than decorative invented values.

Review the complete published object

Review the whole object that will reach the reader. That includes the headline, introductory answer, tables, sources, captions, alt text, page description, related links and Arabic edition. A correct paragraph can be undermined by a misleading title or a chart with the wrong unit. Recalculate worked examples independently and test downloadable files. Confirm that a commercial call to action does not imply an endorsement by a cited authority. Before release, record the responsible human reviewer and the remaining limitations. A draft is still a draft until that approval has actually happened.

Maintain a correction and update trail

After publication, make maintenance part of the editorial plan. Assign the next review date according to how quickly the subject changes, and flag the source if a newer release appears. Explain substantive corrections, retaining enough history to understand what changed. A revised date should represent real work rather than a cosmetic freshness signal. Review reader questions for missing context and useful follow-up research. A trustworthy evidence library is built through this repeated cycle of questioning, verification and correction; it cannot be produced simply by scheduling a high number of automatically written articles.