Chapter 38 · The Staff
The Period Expert
Writing 1962? The Period Expert is the part of the fact-check that asks whether the real world in your pages had arrived yet: the ZIP code, the jet, the single on the radio, the price of a stamp. This chapter explains where it gets your date from, what it can check, and the places it goes blind.
What the Period Expert is
It has no button of its own. Every time you press Check Facts on the Review tab, the Period Expert's work happens inside that check, and its findings arrive as ordinary cards in the Facts tab, alongside wrong dates and misquoted statistics, at no extra cost.
What sets it apart is the question it asks. A plain fact-check asks "is this true?" The Period Expert asks "was this true then?" A character writing a ZIP code on an envelope in June 1962 is describing a world a year before ZIP codes existed.
New accounts can try it on Chapter Four in the Sample chapter (try the fact-checker on this) project, set in June 1962 with anachronisms planted in it.
How it learns your date
From your text. Storskarvia has no setting field, no period selector, and no project-level year. The check reads the period from the words of the document you are in and of the documents before it in the project.
Any of these is enough:
- A dateline or chapter title: June 1962.
- A year in the opening paragraph: It was the second week of June, 1962.
- In a script, a title card such as SUPER: LOS ANGELES, 1962.
Once a scene date is established, relative phrases are pinned to it. "That week" and "last month" are turned into real dates before they are checked, so "the record came out last month" in a scene dated June 1962 is checked as a claim about May 1962.
Earlier documents count. Before reading Chapter Seven, the check looks back through the documents above it in the binder, nearest first and up to 50 of them, for the latest dateline and the last three paragraphs with a year in them. Those are read as if they sat at the top of the chapter, and a dateline in the chapter itself takes over from them. Documents below it in the binder never count. A zero-retention chapter is fetched from your storage for this and not kept; if that connection has expired, its date is missed.
Two things do not tell it the date:
| Where the date lives | Why it does not reach the check |
|---|---|
| The Story Bible or the Timeline | The fact-check does not read either. The Story Bible feeds continuity passes, and the Timeline is a planning view. |
| The document or project title | Titles are not part of the text sent for checking. Put the date in the body. |
If neither the chapter nor anything above it states when it happens, the checker has no period to hold details against, and a detail wrong only for your decade will pass.
Long documents and dates that fall out of view
A long document is read in overlapping windows of 20,000 characters, a little over 3,000 words, with 1,500 characters shared between neighbours so nothing on a boundary is lost. Each window is handed two things from the text before it, including the documents above it:
- The most recent dateline: a paragraph of twelve words or fewer with a year from 1000 to 2099 in it that does not end in a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. June 1962 and Paris (June 1962) both count.
- The last three paragraphs before the window that mention a year.
The carried date is always the latest one. A flashback headed 1944 stays 1944 until a new date line brings the story back, so a return to the present with no date of its own is read against the wrong year.
What to do about it:
- Date every time jump, in both directions. A short line such as August 1962 re-anchors everything after it.
- Give the date a paragraph of its own. A year inside a long paragraph helps only while that paragraph is among the last three with a year in them.
- Keep the binder in reading order. The date carries downward, so a chapter filed above the one that dates the story is read without it.
How a period detail is judged
The claim goes through the same stages as any other: evidence from Wikipedia and web search, a judgement, and then the Skeptic. Two rules in those stages exist for period work.
Contradiction by implication counts. No source will say "there were no ZIP codes in June 1962". A source that says ZIP codes were introduced in July 1963 is enough, and the judge is told to treat it that way.
The date is settled before the Skeptic sees it. The Skeptic may not rescue a detail on the grounds that the sentence never names a year, and a prototype or test flight does not defend a claim about what an ordinary person could have seen or bought. The Skeptic can still win when the evidence shows your detail was right.
When a card says the detail is wrong, the correct date appears only if a retrieved source states it. If the explanation quotes a year no source contains, the card carries a note saying the figure could not be confirmed, and its confidence is halved. Reading a Finding covers that note.
What it can know
The Period Expert is strongest on things with a published date that the web agrees on:
| Kind of detail | Example of what it checks |
|---|---|
| Technology and products | Whether a phone, car model, aircraft or appliance existed yet |
| Media | Whether a record was out, a show was on the air, a film had opened |
| Brands and institutions | Whether a company, service or agency existed under that name |
| Prices | What a stamp, a newspaper or a cinema ticket cost |
| Events | Whether something the characters discuss had happened yet |
What it cannot know
- What the sources do not settle. A regional price, a shop on one street, the week a product reached one town. Thin evidence means no finding, and silence is not proof. Watch for Weaker sourcing than usual above a clean result.
- Words and idioms. Its instructions name things and events, not language. Checking whether a phrase existed in your decade is its own job, described in How to Avoid Anachronisms in Period Writing.
- Attitudes and manners. Opinions are left alone, so a character with suspiciously modern views is your call.
- Anything past claim 150. A dense document is checked to its first 150 claims, and the Facts tab says so.
"Claims were skipped"
Sometimes the checker writes the correction instead of restating your text, for example "ZIP codes had not yet been introduced in 1962". A claim phrased like that would be judged true and the anachronism would vanish, so Storskarvia throws it out and reads the passage a second time.
When some claims still come back that way, a note above the results says "3 claims were skipped because they could not be phrased in a checkable way." Those details were not checked. The reading is sampled, so a fresh check usually phrases them properly, though it is charged as a new check.
If every claim came back that way, the check stops with "Check failed" and explains that nothing was checked. The checks it cost are given back.
Deliberate anachronism and invented worlds
The Period Expert cannot tell a mistake from a choice. A 1962 radio playing a 1990s song on purpose will be flagged like any other. Press Dismiss on the card. Alternate history works the same way: expect cards where your world departs from ours, and dismiss them.
A secondary world with no real dates has nothing for the Period Expert to anchor to. Real-world claims in it are checked as plain facts, and invented history is left alone.
It flags and never fixes; the rewrite is yours. For a detail the Period Expert cannot settle, highlight the passage and ask the Researcher, covered in The Research Library in Part V. Checking your story against itself, rather than against the world, is the continuity editor's job, later in this Part.
Updated 2026-09-14 · Full contents · Something wrong or missing?