Attribution grain should be the sentence or paragraph; a list at the end cannot locate correspondence

What it is

Twelve sentences in the body, twelve links at the end, no superscripts in between. Readers cannot tell which item sentence three corresponds to, so they either treat the whole piece as sourced or give up checking. Sentence-grain attribution requires a locatable correspondence between a source and the text it is supposed to support, at least to the sentence or paragraph. An end list is inventory, not correspondence.

One-click opening solves the channel. After opening, still not knowing which pair, is a grain failure.

Why it happens

Checking is a pairing: this sentence ↔ that passage. An end list leaves n sentences and m sources in two unlinked sets; pairing is an n×m search people will not do. Generators are especially good at scrambling true correspondence: a retrieved file is only topically close to the current sentence. Without a sentence-level hook, that mismatch cannot be found locally; readers can only doubt the whole or let the whole pass.

Paragraph grain is the floor. If a paragraph mixes propositions from different files, paragraph grain is still too coarse and must drop to the sentence.

Studying it

The same article: end list versus sentence-side superscripts versus paragraph-side marks. Point at several sentences and ask people to find the corresponding source. Dependent variables: pairing accuracy, abandonment, rate of attaching an unrelated source to the sentence. Independent variables: ratio of sentences to sources, whether a paragraph has multiple sources.

Pairing accuracy is the lead measure. Having opened the end list but not remembering which sentence it maps to is a grain failure, not successful checking.

Where it stops holding

A whole piece that only restyles a single source the user pasted can be marked once at piece level: “source is the text above.” Poems, slogans, short text with no fact slots have nothing to pair. Tables are better marked by cell than by sentence. A synthesised conclusion should not hang on a single source — that is another card. This entry does not treat the halo that lifts unmarked sentences.

Applying it

• Beside every sentence or paragraph treated as sourced, give the corresponding source. Do not only pile a list at the end.
• If an end list remains, it is an index, not the only mark.
• When a paragraph has several sources, mark sentence by sentence; do not bind different propositions under one paragraph mark.
• Check: point at a middle sentence and ask “which item is the source.” Cannot answer, or answers with a random end-list item, means grain is too coarse.

Related

• Same group: L3.08.1 A real citation that does not support the claim is a more hidden failure than no citation · L3.08.2 A source must open for checking in one click; an uncheckable mark only adds an appearance of credibility · L3.08.4 A conclusion synthesised from several sources cannot be attributed to any single one and must be marked separately · L3.08.5 The presence of attribution raises trust in the whole piece, including parts that were not attributed
• Nearby: L3.02 Source Attribution · L3.03 Hallucination and the Fact-Checking Burden
• Search terms: sentence-grain attribution · citation granularity · end-list insufficiency