Editorial policy

Questions and answers

Each document answers one question, and the answer comes in the opening paragraphs. The questions are the ones congregations ask: how a board and its trustees divide their work, how a food pantry is stocked and staffed, how a meetinghouse is heated through a Connecticut winter, how a parish register is kept. A question is chosen because it is asked often, not because it is easy.

Sources

Every document names the sources the desk read: denominational resource pages, published curricula, preservation and architecture surveys, town records, hymnals and music catalogues, parish histories, and the guidance congregations publish for their own officers and volunteers. A source is named with its address so a reader can go and read it. Numbers appear only where a source gives them.

Dates

Every document carries the date it was checked. When a source changes, or a practice changes, the document is read again and the date moves with it. The file also shows when each document was filed, so a reader can tell what has been revised recently and what has stood for a while.

Corrections

A correction is made in the document itself and the date is updated, so the entry a reader sees is the current reading. Where a correction changes the substance of a document, the desk says so in the body rather than quietly replacing a sentence.