← Concept IndexDEFINITION WHY IT MATTERS COMMONLY CONFUSED WITH
Grounding & citations
Also called: source-backed answers, cite your sources
Grounding means an answer is tied to specific supplied sources, ideally with citations you can open and check. It's the practical antidote to unsupported claims.
A citation you can follow turns 'trust me' into 'check me'. But citations can themselves be fabricated or point to text that doesn't say what's claimed, so the habit is to actually open them, not just count them.
The mere presence of links. A footnote is only grounding if the source exists and supports the sentence it's attached to.