Editorial policy

Questions and answers

Fighting Burns answers one reader question per entry, and gives the answer in the opening paragraph. The question is chosen because a household or a fire company really asks it: a pan of oil that catches, an alarm that never sounded, a scald on a child's arm, a stairwell an older resident cannot use.

Sources

Every entry names the published sources it read: fire service guidance, safety standards, clinical reviews and burn unit patient material. A number appears in an entry only when one of those sources gives it. When sources disagree, the entry says so and gives both readings. Sources are named at the foot of the entry, and no source is named that the desk did not read.

Dates and corrections

Each entry carries the date it was last checked, and that date is what orders the home page, the section pages and the feed. When a source changes, the desk reads the entry again, corrects it and updates the date. Corrections are made in the entry itself, not buried in a later note.

Independence and advertising

The desk writes and edits its own work. Entries are written to answer a question, not to sell a product or a service. Where an entry points a reader to another desk for a related subject, that address is given openly in the text or in the list of desks this site reads.