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Editorial Method and Corrections

How I check what I write, how I translate it, and what happens when I get it wrong.

This page exists because a site that writes about European regulation and deadlines cannot afford to be vague about how it handles facts. The colophon says what I write and why. This says how.

What this site is, and what it is not

These are essays with a thesis. They are not news, not a press review, not real-time regulatory updates. If a piece was published six months ago, what it says about the regulatory picture may have aged, and I say so where it matters.

When I read a regulation I read it as someone who designs and sells software, not as a lawyer. It is a technical reading: what changes in the architecture, in the contract, in the documentation. It is not legal advice, and anyone who uses it as such does so at their own risk. A decision that carries weight needs someone who answers for it with their own signature.

How I handle facts

Primary sources first: the text on EUR-Lex, the vendor’s documentation, the official announcement. Third-party commentary comes after, and I usually cite it only when it adds something the source does not say.

Essays that make verifiable claims (a date, a figure, an article of law) carry a sources block at the end, linking to the sources I actually opened. The inline link sits in the sentence where the claim appears, not three paragraphs later. If I cannot find a primary source for something I want to say, I either write it as opinion or I do not write it.

Pages that summarise a regulatory picture carry a “picture verified as of” line followed by a date. It means exactly that: on that date I rechecked the deadlines and the references. It does not mean they are still valid the day after.

How translations work

Italian is the source. The English, French and German versions are editorial translations: rewritten to read well in the target language, not word-for-word renderings. A title may change, a long sentence may become two. The thesis stays the same.

The language switcher and the hreflang tags declare the relation between the four versions. I do not add “translated from Italian” notices to the text: if an English sentence is ambiguous, the Italian version is the one that counts. Some essays stay in Italian on purpose, because they deal with things too local to matter elsewhere.

Corrections

I get things wrong. When the error is material (a deadline, an amount, a legal reference, an attribution) I correct it in the text itself, not in a footnote nobody reads. The page shows an updated last revised date, and at the point of correction a sentence stays behind saying what changed and when. A typo or an ugly sentence I fix quietly: that is not information anyone needs.

If you find an error, write to [email protected] with the URL of the page and, if you can, the source that contradicts what I wrote. I reply and, if you are right, I correct. I do not publish the names of people who report errors unless they ask me to.

Language models in the writing

I use language models as drafting and translation tools. They help get a first draft moving, carry a text from one language to another, find the sentence that would not come. What comes out I reread, rewrite, and often throw away. The theses are mine, and so are the errors: if an essay says something wrong, the responsibility does not get offloaded onto the tool.

I do not use models to invent sources. Every reference in a sources block is one I opened myself.

Crawlers and AI use of the content

What language-model crawlers may do with this site (index, cite, train, reproduce) is decided case by case, separately, in the colophon, under Language models and crawlers. The robots.txt file reflects the same decisions.

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